Impact of parenting styles on childrens academic performance in Milimani preschool in Westlands Divisions, Nairobi Province Kenya

Abstract

The study focused on the four parenting styles: democratic, dictatorial, indulgent and uninvolving/neglectful, with need to establish their impact on preschoolers' academic performance. Each style is unique in terms of the characteristics which are exhibited through parent-child interaction dimensions at home. Since children come to school from different parenting styles backgrounds, psychosocially and psychologically they differ and therefore, handle class tasks differently. It is during child upbringing that children acquire characters, behaviors and attitudes that influence their reactions towards situations and people around them. What children do at home and school depends largely on how they have been raised by their parents.

Children are a reflection of their home and upbringing backgrounds. This is best revealed through their mode of interaction with others within and outside immediate family environment; and also by how they relate and respond to those around them. This study therefore, highlights the importance of parenting in raising upright children by use of profitable parenting styles. For this study, the preschoolers from Milimani preschool, their teachers and parents provided data that helped establish the impact of parenting styles on children's academic performance.

This school was purposefully sampled due to its geographical location. It has children from upper, middle and low social economic status, a factor that is likely to produce the four parenting styles backgrounds that were needed for this study indiscriminatively. Through the study's instruments; the questionnaire, intervention module, interview schedules and documentary analysis, findings indicated that indeed children coming from different parenting styles backgrounds perform differently.

The study analysis showed that children who enjoy a democratic parenting background have a higher chance of better performance and those children whose parents are uninvolved generally score the lowest. The indulgent parents bring up more average-performing preschoolers whereas the authoritarian parents, whose style of parenting is highly demanding and directive but not responsive, tend to raise children who under the circumstances, are made to produce good results. Results indicate that children under authoritarian parents were in above and average performance categories only, with none in the below average group. Since success in education is measured in terms of how well a child performs from one level or grade to another, it is important as parents, to know the characteristics of the four parenting styles and understand their impact on preschool children's class performance and life in general.