Parenting Styles as Predictors of Social Maladjustment among Undergraduate Students

Abstract

The study investigated parenting styles as predictors of social maladjustment among undergraduate students, with one hundred and twenty (120) undergraduate students with mean age of 21.63 and SD of 2.40140 were selected using multi-stage (cluster, simple random: by balloting and purposive) sampling techniques as participants from Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu. Two sets of instruments were used for the study namely; Baumrid (1971) Parental care scale and Wiggins (1966), social maladjustment scale were used for data collections, a cross sectional design was adopted, the statistical test used for data analysis is linear regression using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 25 software. Thus, Means and standard deviation distributions will be investigated. These will help to determine the direction and strength of the relationships among the study variables (George, 2008). Findings shows that parental style (authoritative at sig.= . .080 and permissiveness at sig.= .118) which exceeded the benchmark of at p< .05 didn’t independently predict social. While authoritarian predicted sig.= .018 which falls below the benchmark of at p< .05 positively predict social maladjustment, Hence parents are advice to adopt both permissive and authoritative style of parenting and authoritarian style so as to enable the student adjust to the society perfectly.