Study of Adolescents Perceived Parenting Styles Based on their Gender and Age

Parenting styles play a major role in determining the life styles of adolescents and that is why they share a special significance. The present study was done with the aim to investigate adolescents’ perceived parenting styles based on their gender and age. The study was conducted by a post-event method and with a sample size of 623 subjects (311 female and 312 male), who were selected by the multistage sampling method. Data were analyzed, after being collected by the Baumrind Parenting Styles Questionnaire, using multivariate analysis of variance. The results indicated that the main effects of gender and age are significant at 0.01 level. Parents’ interaction with boys is more authoritarian and with girls more authoritative; also compared with adolescents less than 17 years, they interact with adolescents 17 years old more permissively. The interaction effects of gender and age were significant at 0.05 level only in the permissive parenting style. This means that unlike the girls, parents use more and more the permissive parenting style along with increasing age of adolescent teenage boys. It was concluded that the interaction patterns of parents with children are not fixed and these patterns vary according to gender and age of the children.