Impact of Parenting Style and Maternal Self-Efficacy on Children’s Dental Cooperation

Background: Children’s behavior management problems are the most frequent issues that occur in pediatric dentistry, and parenting style is one of the factors that affect children’s responses to dental treatment. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of parenting style on the child’s cooperation in dentistry and to explore the role of the mother’s self-efficacy in this regard. Methods: The current cross-sectional research was conducted on a random sample of 88 children aged 4–6 years who visited a pediatric dental specialist’s office in 2020. Parenting style, the mother’s self-efficacy, and the child’s cooperation were assessed using the Baumrind Questionnaire, Dumka’s Self-efficacy Scale (Jackson et al., 1996), and the Frankel Index, respectively. The chi-square test was utilized to analyze the data (P<0.05). Results: Overall, 75 (85.2%), 7 (8%), and 6 (6.8%) mothers had authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles, respectively. In addition, 64 (72.7%), 20 (22.7%), and 4 (4.6%) mothers had high, medium, and low levels of self-efficacy, respectively. The results indicated that for the authoritarian parenting style, 77.4% of children exhibited good cooperation, whereas, for the other two parenting styles, none of the children showed good cooperation (P=0.006). For mothers with high, medium, and low self-efficacy, the percentage of children demonstrating good cooperation was 73.4%, 55%, and 0%, respectively (P=0.006). Among mothers with the authoritative parenting style, those with high self-efficacy reported the highest level of children’s cooperation (P=0.007). Conclusion: It can be concluded that children’s cooperation is influenced by their mothers’ parenting style and self-efficacy.