Investigating the Factors Affecting Parenting Style: A Qualitative Research

The family is the first and most important institution in human history and civilization, and it is the most suitable platform for finding human capabilities, talents, and abilities, which play an essential role in the formation of human personality. The type and method of education with the parenting style are among the main elements with its dynamic and influential processes within the family. The effects and consequences of parenting style have been considered on children's mental health and social behavior. Parenting styles are influenced by cultural, social, political, economic, and other factors. It seems that the emotional aspects of parent–child relationships play an important role in shaping children's behaviors and social views. Also, the parenting style can significantly influence children's social acceptance process. So, this research aims to investigate the influencing factors on parenting style using qualitative research method.

The present study was a qualitative type of foundational data theory. The statistical population of the current research comprises parents with primary school children studying in the academic year 2019–2020 who met the conditions for participation in the study. The parents who are not divorced or about to divorce and volunteered to participate in the research were invited to participate in the interview. The sampling method was purposeful and selected from the list of parents willing to cooperate. Then the parents were contacted, and a semi–structured and interactive interview was conducted randomly with the parents who were willing to cooperate. Sampling continued until the data saturation, and no new information was obtained during the interviews. The data were collected through in–depth and semi–structured interviews in schools. The duration of each interview varied from 45 to 60 minutes, depending on the conditions of the participants. During the interview, the conversations were recorded with the permission of the interviewees to check the information carefully. After interviewing 8 parents (5 mothers and 3 fathers), theoretical saturation was obtained. Among the ethical considerations observed were voluntary participation, assuring parents about the confidentiality of their conversations, and deleting audio files after writing them down. Strauss and Corbin's objectivist approach (2008) was used to inductively analyze the data, and micro–analysis was carried out at three levels: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding.

During this research, 12 themes, each of which contains several sub–themes, were extracted. The core codes are parents' perceived parenting style, parents' religious orientation, marital conflicts, relatives' involvement, parents' responsiveness, father's role, economic conditions, childhood injuries, personality traits, physical problems, guilt, and parental expectations.

Various factors affect the parenting style of parents. These factors sometimes have a positive and sometimes a negative effect. Therefore, knowing and understanding them can improve the parenting style of parents.