Parenting Styles and Socio-Emotional Behaviour of Children Aged 6-12 Years in Andhra Pradesh: A Correlational Study

The relationship between parenting behaviour and children's socio-emotional functioning is well documented in Western samples, yet evidence from primary-school-age children in Andhra Pradesh, India, is limited. This cross-sectional correlational study examined whether parent-reported authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting were related to children's total difficulties and prosocial behaviour. Fifty parents of children aged 6-12 years completed an online 25-item researcher-developed questionnaire. Most parents (86%) reported predominantly authoritative behaviour. Authoritative parenting was unrelated to prosocial behaviour (r = .06) and difficulties (r = -.03), and authoritarian parenting was unrelated to difficulties (r = .13), so the main hypotheses were not supported. Authoritarian parenting was negatively correlated with prosocial behaviour (r = -.37, p = .009), and children from joint families scored higher on prosocial behaviour than children from nuclear families (d = 0.70). Scale reliability was low (α = -.21 to .28), so the findings are tentative. Validated tools and larger samples are needed.