Medical Student's Perception of the Future Orientation of Considering Parent's Parenting Styles and Children Identity Styles

Future is one of the primary concerns combined with adult's goals, hopes and fears. Nowadays with Industrialization of societies, young adult's marriage and vocational future is postponed. Hence, the purpose of the present study was to examine indirect effect of perceived parenting styles on future orientation among medical students with mediating role of identity styles. This study was a causal model with the aim of discovering causal relationship between variables. Then, 386 sample (200 male, 186 female) of 5th to 7th-year students of Iran Medical Sciences University were selected randomly; they fill in Berzunskey Identity Styles questionnaire, Prospective Life course inventory and Father-Mother-Peer Inventory. In order to testing research models and hypothesis and determining causal relationships between variables, path analysis method was used applying Lisrel software. Furthermore, statistical analysis showed significant relationship between mediating role of informative identity style in the effect of mother's autonomy and father's acceptance on behavioral (0/27,0/25), cognitive (0/21,0/10), motivational (0/36,0/0/32) components of future orientation. Moreover, the result showed that just perceived parenting style of mother (autonomy, acceptance) between perceptions of parenting styles can predict informative identity style and behavioral component of future orientation. These two dimensions have strong relationship with informative identity style; in other words, the young adult whose mother has more autonomy and less acceptance parenting style can use more informative style. The explanation of this finding indicates that participating in decision making would direct young adults to appropriate choices.