Parenting Style Dichotomies and their Role in the Development of a Child’s Problem Behaviour

Managing child problem behaviors in children is a crucial issue for a peaceful and healthy society. The step for an effective management of problem behavior starts with effective parenting. Hence the aim of this study is to explore the role of positive and negative parenting dichotomies in the development of problem behavior of boys. This study was the part of a project carried out by the researchers entitled as ‘Problem Behaviour among Adolescents: A Multivariate Study of Paths of Influence, Parenting, Family-Pathology and Peers’, for which 800 deviant boys were identified. From this list 200 boys were selected by simple random sampling method. By conducting interviews and administration of the Problem Behavior Checklist of Veeraraghavan and Dogra (2000) and the Multi-dimensional parenting scale of Chauhan (1955) on children and their fathers, data was collected. The collected data was analyzed by using regression analysis. The results of this study exhibit that positive parenting (such as dominant, democratic, love, progress, independent, acceptance, and encouragement) is significantly associated with lower problem behavior (R =.852; F=72.61; ñ<.01; n=100) and explain 71 percent variance in the scores. On the other hand the negative parenting (such as dependency, autocratic, submissive, hate, conservative, discouraging, and rejection) is associated with increased problem behavior in children (R =.901; F=118.61; ñ<.01; n=100) and explain 80 percent variance in the scores.