A Study of the Relationship between Mothers’ Child-Rearing Practices and their Daughters’ Mental Health

S.  M. Tabatabaee

This research was conducted to assess the relationship between mothers’ child-rearing practices (authoritative, authoritarian and permissive) and their daughters’ mental health. To this end, 373 students of the third grade of junior high school were selected in Tehran through random cluster sampling method. The design of the study was survey. The instrumentation comprised a 28-item version of Goldberg’s General Health Questionnaire and Buri's Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ). For the purpose of data analysis, descriptive (mean and standard deviation) as well as inferential statistics including Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate analysis of regression were used. The results indicated that there was a significant relationship between authoritative parenting style and mental health, while there was a negative association between authoritarian parenting style and mental health (p<0.05). In addition, no relationship was observed between permissive parenting style and mental health. Hence, it can be concluded that in comparison with authoritarian style, permissive style is associated with higher levels of mental health.

Keywords: parenting styles, authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, mental health