Association between disciplinary styles used by parents and behavior problems among pre-school children

Parenting styles are defined as set of attitudes; beliefs and goals parents have and put into practice in their daily interactions with their children. Parents adopt many parenting styles, from quite strict to very permissive one. An attempt was made to investigate the association between parental use of disciplinary styles and behaviour problems among preschool children. The sample constituted 100 (50 boys and 50 girls) studying in three different preschool settings i.e. Laboratory nursery school, Anganwadi centres and Private schools in Tirupati town. The mothers (N=100) of these children and teachers (N=10) constituted the sub samples of the study. Data were collected by using stratified random sampling technique. Schedule for Parenting Style developed by investigator. Behaviour Problem Checklist developed (BPCL) by Anuradha and Bharathi (2000), was adapted to suit to preschool children and was used to assess the behaviour problems among preschool children. Results indicates that Children exhibit more behavior problems where Parents who use more authoritarian parenting style. Whereas parents used more democratic parenting style then children exhibit less behavioral problems. Parents follow higher permissive parenting style. Children from those families may exhibit more behavioral problems