Influence of Parenting Styles on Behavioural outcomes of Adolescents in Secondary schools in Nakuru East Subcounty, Kenya

Abstract

Secondary schools in Nakuru East Sub County are struggling with a variety of behavioral issues most notably substance abuse and teenage sex. Literature from around the globe suggests that such behavioral problems among adolescent can be associated with the style of parenting. However, studies examining the link between parenting style and students behavior in the Kenyan context are few and not conducted in Nakuru East Sub-County. It is not clear whether the behavioral issues experienced in the secondary schools within the study area can be attributed to the style of parenting. This study sought to address this gap in knowledge. The specific objectives of the study were to examine the relationship between authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful parenting styles, and the behavioral outcomes of adolescents in secondary schools in the Sub County. The study was guided by the Baumrind Theory of Parenting Styles and employed a cross-sectional survey design. Questionnaires were distributed to a sample of 155 students out of which 101 were duly completed and returned to the researcher. The questionnaire contained both open-ended and close-ended questions. The validity of the instrument was assessed by subjecting the instrument to scrutiny by university faculty members while reliability was assessed by conducting a pilot study and analyzing the data using the Cronbach alpha method. The respondents were selected from the population of 18,600 students in 31 public day secondary schools within the Sub-County using the stratified random sampling methods. The five wards within the Sub County and the students’ class were used as strata. Responses to the close-ended questions were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The study found that negative sexual behavior such pornography and substance use are highly prevalent among students within the study area with 44.6% and 42.6% admitting to have engaged in these practices respectively as some point in their lives. However, only permissive parenting and neglectful parenting practices were found to have a statistically significant relationship with these behavioral outcomes. Permissive parenting had a positive and statistically significant relationship with the students’ sexual behavior but no relationship with substance use behavior. Neglectful parenting was found to have a negative and statistically significant relationship with substance use behavior but no relationship at all with sexual behavioral outcomes. The study recommends that schools within the study area encourage parents to embrace authoritative parenting as results shows that it tends to discourage both negative sexual behaviors and substance abuse. Schools should also discourage authoritative parenting and neglectful parenting.