PARENTING STYLES AS PERCEIVED BY ACADEMICALLY TALENTED STUDENTS

Abstract

Home environment and parenting factor have been suggested to affect students’ performance in academic as well as their talents development. However each parent may employ different approaches to educate and deal with their children. It is an interest to find out how academically talented students were brought up, in specific to identify parental styles approaches that they had experienced. This study was conducted among 375 academically talented students from Malaysia. They were given Parental Authority Questionnaire to identify parenting style of each of their parents. It was found that the highest mean score was for authoritative mothers, followed by authoritative fathers, authoritarian fathers, authoritarian mothers, permissive fathers, and permissive mothers. Levels of parenting styles as perceived by academically talented students based on gender also showed the same pattern. Result of independent-samples t-tests showed that there were significance differences in means between female and male academically talented students for mothers’ authoritativeness, mothers’ authoritarianism and fathers’ authoritativeness. Elements of warmth and control are important in children’s development. Parents and teachers need to give attention to these elements to nurture their children in developing them to the fullest