dc.description.abstract |
Parenting is a lifelong commitment, and has a pervasive impact on children’s
development. Significant improvements in the health and well-being of children,
including the level of child treatment, cannot be achieved without strengthening the
skills, knowledge, and confidence of parents in parenting. The study investigated
the influence of parental contextual factors such as parental age, parental gender,
marital status, level of formal education and occupation on parenting practices and
styles. It was guided by the following objectives: To establish how parental
contextual factors such as parental age, parental gender, marital status, level of
formal education and occupation influence parenting practices and to determine
how parental contextual factors influence parenting styles. The study was guided
by moral internalization, parenting styles approach and ecological theories. The
study adopted ex post facto research design. Data for this study was collected with
aid of questionnaire from 200 parents who had children aged below 18 years in two
purposively selected sites using systematic random sampling techniques.
Questionnaires were used to collect data in which the quantitative data from closed
ended questions was analyzed descriptively and using inferential statistics while
data resulting from open-ended questions were analyzed thematically. Inferential
statistics applied in the testing of hypotheses were chi-square and The Pearson
Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient which was done at the level of
significance of α = 0.05 using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS).
Based on descriptive analysis results, the study concluded that parental age,
parental gender, level of formal education and occupation did not influence
parenting practices. However, marital status was found to have an influence on
parent-child relationship. In addition, on the hypothesis testing results in which the
p value of the test statistics were greater than the level of significance (p > α) for
the independent variables parental age and marital status the study concluded that
those variables had no significant relationship with parenting styles. However,
parental gender was found to have a strong negative significant influence on
parenting styles based on the hypothesis testing verdict based on the obtained
result of p < α for that hypothesis. Further, the study found out that the level of
formal education had a positive association with parenting styles. Occupation was
also found to have significant influence on parenting styles. The study concludes
that parent-child relationship is very crucial in child development and is influenced
by marital status. Also the study findings proved that parenting styles are very
important part of parenting as they are influenced by parental gender, level of
formal education and occupation. The study recommends that parental contextual
factors must be taken into account when coming up with policies or programs on
parenting. |
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