Parenting Styles and Family Demographic Factors as Predictors of Abusive Parenting Among Adolescents

Abstract

The present research was aimed to identify the abusive family environment in disciplinary context for adolescents through analyzing the link between parenting styles, risk family factors, and experiences of abusive parenting in adolescent girls and boys. Study involved a sample of 300 school going adolescents with age range from 14-17 years. Physical Abuse Scale (Rizvi & Najam, 2014), Psychological Maltreatment Experience Scale (Petretic-Jackson, Betz, & Pitman, 1995), and Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) were used to measure physical abuse, psychological abuse, and parenting styles (respectively) perceived by adolescents. Findings of study revealed that authoritarian parents were perceived more abusive, physically as well as psychologically as compared to permissive parents; while authoritative parents were perceived as non abusive parents. Findings of regression analysis showed that authoritarian parenting predicted abuse potential; while, authoritative parenting predicted non abusive parenting. Moreover among family demographic factors, larger families and joint family system were appeared as significant predictors of abusive parenting. The present research might be an effort to spark the recognition of an issue that parents are perceived abusive by their children though they are practicing different styles of parenting to control their children. Future implications of the study were also discussed.