Healthy and pathological aspects of parenting among Iranian families: A qualitative research

The aim of this study was to investigate the healthy and pathological aspects of parenting among Iranian’s families. This study had a qualitative design and the method used is Grounded Theory. The population consisted of all Muslim parents with children over 10 years of age, living in Tehran and Karaj during the summer of 2016 to the summer of 2017. The sample consisted of 44 Muslim parents who were investigated through semi-structured interviews. The interviews' data were analyzed on the basis of grounded theory coding (coding paradigm or Strauss and Corbine method). Final codings consisted of 216 initial codes, 9 clusteres and 3 themes. In the axial analysis of the initial codes, 9 main clusters were extracted: rejection; kindness/support; over protection; inflexibility; optimum structure; chaos; coercion; assertiveness; autonomy support; negligence/passivity. Althought Theses clusters can be conceptually distinguished, but they have common features. In the selective coding, 9 clusters were integrated around 3 major themes : Intimacy (rejection; kindness/support; over protection); structure/rule (inflexibility; optimum structure; chaos); autonomy/freedom of action (coercion; assertiveness; autonomy support; negligence/passivity). Among these three themes, the medium cluster draws a balanced and healthy situation and two other clusters represent the pathological aspects of parenting. The results of this study showed that most of the parents involved in the study used a kind of authoritarian parenting style(the combination of over protection, inflexibility and coercion) and Healthy parenting (the combination of kindness/support, optimum structure and autonomy support) is located in the second rank.