Parenting Styles and Dimensions of Children's Maladaptive Behaviors

Many behavioral problems are resulting from inappropriate parenting styles and inattention to behavioral-emotional difficulties in childhood. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between parenting styles and dimensions of children''s maladaptive behaviors. 120 six-year old boys, who were enrolled in the first grade of elementary school, were selected and completed Baumrind’s Parenting Styles Questionnaire, Adaptive Behavior Scale and Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (RCPM). The results showed that permissive parenting style is positively related to violence and disruptive, antisocial, outburst behavior, and hyperactivity tendency. Maternal and paternal educations were positively related to outburst, and untrustworthy behavior, respectively. Intelligence of children was positively related to outburst, and untrustworthy behavior. There was not any significant relationship between parenting styles with parents’ education and children’s intelligence. Based on current research results and adding up previous studies, new hypotheses for future studies were suggested.