Psychological Well-being and Perceived Parenting Style among Adolescents

ABSTRACT The family of an adolescent assists in shaping the adolescent’s behavior and psychological well-being throughout life. In order for the adolescents to maintain an identity, they require security and affection from their parents. To assess the psychological well-being, perceived parenting style of adolescents and to determine the relationship between psychological well-being and perceived parenting style among the adolescents, a correlational survey was conducted in five randomly selected schools in Southern India with 554 adolescents studying in 8th grade to 9th grade. A self-administered perceived parenting scale and a standardized Ryff scale for the assessment of psychological well-being were adopted to collect data, which were analyzed using SPSS. Without gender differences, majority (51%) had a high psychological well-being; 49% revealed low psychological well-being. Majority (95.5%) had a purpose in life and positive relation with others. Most (93.2%) of the adolescents perceived their parents as authoritative. A moderately positive relationship was found between psychological well-being and authoritarian and permissive parenting styles and a negative correlation between psychological well-being and neglectful parenting style. The study concluded that parenting styles will have an influence on adolescents’ psychological well-being. Among the four parenting styles, authoritative parenting is warm and steady and hence will contribute to the psychological development of adolescents. They also had maintained a positive relation with others and have a purpose in life. Adolescents who perceived their parents as authoritarian had a decreased autonomy and those who perceived their parents as permissive had a diminished personal growth.