Impact of Parenting Styles on Emotional Maturity and Social Adjustment Capacity of Adolescents: An Empirical Study

Abstract

This empirical study investigates the impact of parenting styles—authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and uninvolved—on the emotional maturity and social adjustment capacity of adolescents in Rajnandgaon district, Chhattisgarh, India. Drawing upon Baumrind’s (1971) seminal typology and Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) four-fold classification, the study employed a cross-sectional survey design with a stratified random sample of 500 school-going adolescents (250 males, 250 females) from Classes 9th to 12th across 10 higher secondary schools. Data were collected using the Parenting Style Scale (PSS-GMMD), Emotional Maturity Scale (EMS) and Social Adjustment Scale (SAS-KA). Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, Tukey HSD post hoc, two-way ANOVA, multiple regression and exploratory factor analysis were performed. Results revealed that authoritative parenting demonstrated strong positive correlations with emotional maturity (r = 0.804, p < 0.001) and social adjustment (r = 0.819, p < 0.001), while uninvolved parenting showed strong negative correlations (r = -0.633 and r = -0.663 respectively, p < 0.001). One-way ANOVA confirmed significant differences across parenting styles for both emotional maturity (F(3,496) = 254.13, p < 0.001, η² = 0.606) and social adjustment (F(3,496) = 248.92, p < 0.001, η² = 0.601). Multiple regression models explained 83.3% of variance in emotional maturity and 83.5% in social adjustment. Gender differences were negligible. The findings underscore the critical role of parenting styles in shaping adolescent psychosocial development and provide evidence-based recommendations for parental education programs.