Abstract:
Parenting practices are a known indicator of children's psychosocial adjustment; therefore, understanding factors impacting parenting practices is necessary. The primary aim of the present research is to analyze how parents’ cultural orientation, parents' socialization goals, and other sociodemographic factors like gender, education, and living location impact parenting practices. A secondary aim is to analyze gender and locality-based differences in parents' cultural orientation and socialization goals. For this purpose, parent self-reported data was collected from a sample of 400 Parents (mothers =224, 56%; fathers = 166, 41.5%) living in major cities of Pakistan using convenience sampling. Results indicated that parents' education, their cultural orientation of self-reliance and interdependence, and benevolence and prosocial socialization goals significantly predicted positive parenting practices. Parents’ education, gender, cultural orientation of family integrity, and socialization goals of relatedness, agency, and self-direction significantly predicted negative parenting practices. Mothers have similar socialization goals for their sons and daughters except for benevolence and prosocial goals, while fathers have significantly different socialization goals for sons and daughters. Parents living in rural areas have significantly higher socialization goals of all kinds and cultural orientation of separation from in-group than parents living in urban areas. The present study's findings support the importance of parents' cultural orientation, socialization goals, and parents' education in parenting practices.
Author(s): Anowra Khan, Tamkeen Ashraf Malik