An Elaboration of the Relationship between Religious Training, Parenting Styles, and Children's Social Health (A Case Study of Kashani High School Students in 2010-2011 Academic Year

Family, as the first and most significant social institution, is indispensable to the formation of children’s personality and their acculturation. Hence, in today’s world, the role of family and parenting styles has attracted scientists and scholars’ attention in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Meanwhile, researchers are endeavoring to investigate parents’ religious training as well as parenting styles and the role they play in children’s social health. Therefore, in the present study children’s social health and its relation with parents’ religious training and parenting styles have been surveyed. More specifically, the main purpose of this study was to determine the present status of parents’ religious training, to find out the extent to which authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles are prevalent, to indentify the degree of children’s social health, and to specify the relationship between each of the aforementioned variables with children’s social health. This research was a social survey and its data were collected via administering questionnaires and interviews. For assessing parenting styles variable, the related items were utilized on a Likert Scale. The validity and reliability of these scales were examined and confirmed through Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. The statistical population of the study comprised all Kashani high school students in 2010-2011 academic year. For the purpose of sampling Cochran’s sampling formula was used and 367 individuals were selected through simple random sampling method. Results of the study revealed that there was a significant, positive relationship between parents’ religious training, the extent of families being authoritative, and children’s social health at 0.01 level of significance. In addition, the findings showed a negative relationship between parenting styles and children’s social health at 0.01 level of significance. Furthermore, the results of multiple regression analysis and the obtained β coefficients showed the effect of families’ religious training, parents’ authoritarian and authoritative styles on children’s social health to be 0.23, -0.19 and 0.16, respectively,