Parenting styles and juvenile delinquency in Zambia

This main objective of this study was to explore the relationship between maternal and paternal parenting styles and juvenile delinquency among juvenile offenders at Katombora, Nakambala and Insakwe approved schools in Zambia. Despite juvenile delinquency being a pervasive and serious societal menace and widely supported by literature as linked to parenting styles, no study has explored its relationship with parenting styles. It is against this backdrop that this study was conducted. This study was limited to the four mentioned parenting styles and juvenile offenders in approved schools. Most literature reviewed links authoritarian, neglectful and permissive parenting styles to juvenile delinquency and authoritative parenting to prosociality. This study was guided by six theories: The Baumrind parenting typology, the social control, the cognitive, the behavioral, the psychodynamic and the Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems. It used the convergent-parallel mixed methods design, purposive sampling selected the research sites while convenience sampling selected participants for quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. A total of 132 questionnaires were administered and 25 semi-structured interviews conducted. Quantitative data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and the qualitative data via thematic data analysis. Contrary to the first objective of the study findings revealed the maternal authoritative parenting style as the most prevalent. Results revealed no significant relationships between maternal and paternal authoritative, authoritarian, permissive parenting styles and juvenile delinquency, a significant relationship between paternal neglectful parenting style and juvenile delinquency and indicated that female participants reported more of paternal parenting styles the same way male participants reported more of maternal parenting styles. It was recommended that parents adopt intensive parenting; that relevant authorities sensitize parents, policy makers and stakeholders on the link between paternal neglectful parenting, single parenting, divorce, juvenile association with delinquent peers and juvenile delinquency. It was also recommended that further research be conducted in this area.