Relationship between parenting style, family type, personality dispositions and academic achievement of young people in Nigeria

Abstract

An attempt was made in this study to determine the relationship between parenting styles, family types, personality dispositions and academic achievement of young people. 352 university students (144 males &
208 females) from single parent, monogamous and polygamous families responded to measures of parenting style and some personality variables and their scores on these variables and their academic performances were compared. It was hypothesized that: there would be significant and positive correlations between parenting styles and personality variables of
self esteem, need for achievement, locus of control, sense of competence and academic achievement scores; that the personality variables would predict academic achievement of the participants; and that young people from families where authoritative parenting was practiced would report higher levels of the personality variables studied and obtain higher academic achievement The obtained results partially supported the hypotheses and identified type of family as the strongest predictor of academic achievement. The results also implicated authoritative parenting and single parent families in high academic achievement.