An Investigation of the Relationship between Parenting Styles and Student's Anxiety

Children and adolescents gain their first cognitive, social, affective and psychological experiences in the family and parenting styles play a pivotal role in the formation of children and adolescents’ personality. Thus, the present study explored the relationship between parenting styles and students’ anxiety. The research method was survey and the population of the study comprised high school girls and boys in Tehran. The sample which was selected through simple random sampling method included 80 students. The instrumentation included Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (Robinson et al.) and Phillips’ School Anxiety Inventory. The instruments enjoyed face validity. In addition, their reliability was calculated through Cronbach’s alpha and the obtained indices were considered acceptable. Results indicated that there was a significant relationship between parenting styles and students’ anxiety. In addition, chi-square results showed that there was a significant relation between parenting styles and families’ socio-economic status. More specifically, families with high and middle SES mostly used authoritative style in their child rearing, whereas low SES families frequently used authoritarian style. The findings also showed that girls had higher levels of anxiety than boys. Furthermore, low SES students experienced higher levels of anxiety as compared with students of high and middle SES.