Emotions play an important role in an individual’s life, generally an individual experience a lot of emotions in day to day life. Emotions are the subjective feelings of an individual. There are different emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, fear etc. which are experienced by an individual in different situations.

Emotional intelligence is helpful in improving the communication of the person with other people. By improving the communication it helps in improving the relationships among human beings. It helps the person to improve his empathetic skills. A person with high emotional intelligence usually acts with integrity hence he gets respect from others in the society. It also improves one’s career prospects and such people enjoy their work wholeheartedly. An emotionally intelligent person manages any changes very confidently, learns from his failures and has a positive attitude. Hence emotional intelligence will help in reducing the stress level and increase creativity.

Family is the minutest and basic component of the society. Family environment is the vital aspect in individual’s development. The basis of an individual’s development lies in the family. And for a child the most significant part of the family is the parent. Parents are the caregiver of the children of their own species. Parents are the most significant people in life of children. Children learn from parents and depend on them for protection, care and overall well-being since their birth. It is believed that the way in which the parents discipline the child leads to long lasting impact on the child.

Parenting has gained plentiful research attention from numerous scientific disciplines. Many theoretical frameworks emphasize that parenting plays a vital role in child development, which has driven research investigating the influence of parenting on child development for above 75 years. Maximum parents feel that the adolescence is the most challenging part of child rearing. In this stage cognitive, social, emotional and contextual changes occur in life of the individual and he tries to establish his own identity, develop new skills and responsibilities.

Need of the Study

Parenting is a complex activity that includes many specific behaviors that work individually and together to influence child outcomes. Studies have shown that parenting style is positively related to emotional intelligence among adolescents. Parents play the most important role in the emotional development of the child. 

Objectives of the Study

• To assess the perceived maternal parenting style and emotional intelligence among male and female adolescent students studying in selected schools of Shimla (HP)

• To find the relationship between perceived maternal parenting style and emotional intelligence among male and female adolescent students studying in selected schools of Shimla (HP)

• To find the association of perceived maternal parenting style with selected demographic variables among adolescent students studying in selected schools of Shimla (HP)

To find the association of emotional intelligence with selected demographic variables among adolescent students studying in selected schools of Shimla (HP)

• Research Approach: Quantitative Research Approach 

• Research Design: Non-Experimental Correlational research design.

• Setting of the Study: Selected schools of Shimla (H.P)

• Study Population: Adolescent Students 

• Sample Size: About 100 students

• Sampling Technique: Non-Probability, Convenient sampling technique 

Informed consent was taken from selected students and confidentiality of the students was also maintained.

Inclusive Criteria

Students available during the period of data collection in study setting and who were willing to participate in the study. 

Exclusive Criteria

Students who were not willing to participate in the study and were not present during data collection.

Development of Tools

Self-structured and standardized questionnaires.

Description of Tools

Part I: Sociodemographic Profile: This part of the tool consists of the sociodemographic data related to the adolescents which is developed by reviewing various studies. This tool provides personal information about the adolescents.

Part II: Structured Questionnaire for Assessing Perceived Maternal Parenting Style

This part consists of 30 items for assessing perceived maternal parenting style. Items measure the responsiveness and control of mothers as perceived by their adolescent children. All the items were prepared as matching for the involvement of both mothers. The students are required to respond on a scale of five points as, ‘Always’, ‘Often’, ‘Sometimes’, ‘Rarely’ and ‘Never’. Score is 5 to 1. All items are positive. 15 items in the scale are parental responsiveness items and 15 items are parental control items. A mother with high rating in both responsiveness and control is categorized as authoritative mother. A mother, who gets low rating in both responsiveness and control, is categorized as negligent mother. A mother, with high rating in responsiveness and low rating in control, is categorized as permissive mother. A mother, who is rated as low in responsiveness and high in control, is categorized as authoritarian mother.

Part III: Emotional Intelligence Scale 

This part contains the standardized tool to assess the emotional intelligence of the adolescents. It was a self-report emotional intelligence scale having 16 statements on a 7 point Likert scale (from 1-strongly disagree, to 7- strongly agree). The four domains covered under tool were: Self-emotional appraisal, other’s emotional appraisal, regulation of emotions and use of emotions:

Validity of Tool

By the experts in this field.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Section-I: Table 1 Depicts that the Majority of the students (85%) were in the age group of 14-15 years and there were 51% males and 49% female students whereas majority of the students (40%) belonged to nuclear families and residing in urban areas (58%). With regard to family monthly income majority of students families earned <Rs. 20000 (36%) and majority of students were Hindu (93%).Most of the students were the first born child (40%) and studying in 10^th standard (53%) with medium of education being English (100%).With respect to caregivers other than the mother majority of student’s caregivers were their fathers (72%).With regard to educational status of mother majority of mothers were educated up to high school or higher secondary (41%) while majority of mothers were homemakers (81%). In regards to hours spent with mother and caregivers majority of students spent 8-12 hours with mothers (55%) and with caregivers (45%).

Table 1: Frequency and Percentage Distribution of Sample Characteristics (N = 100)

Section-II

Findings Related to Assessment of Perceived Maternal Parenting Style: Table 2 Depicts that majority of the students (71%) perceived their mother to be authoritative, 12% perceived their mother as permissive, 10% as authoritarian and 7% as negligent mother. Hence it was concluded that most of the mothers (71%) were authoritative, 12% were permissive, 10% were authoritarian and 7% were negligent mother as per perception of their adolescent children.

Table 2: Frequency and Percentage Distribution of Adolescent Students According To Their Perceived Maternal Parenting Style (N = 100)

Table 3 shows that majority (40%) of the adolescent students had very high emotional intelligence whereas 21% had high emotional intelligence, 16% had low emotional intelligence, 13% had extremely high emotional intelligence and 10% had average emotional intelligence. Hence it is concluded that most of the adolescent students had very high emotional intelligence.

Table 3: Frequency and Percentage Distribution of Level of Emotional Intelligence among Adolescent Students N = 100

Section–III

Findings Related to Correlation between Perceived Maternal Parenting Style and Emotional Intelligence among Adolescent Students: Table 4 shows that there was a significant positive correlation (r = 0.597) at 0.05 level of significance between perceived maternal parenting style and emotional intelligence among adolescent students. Hence it was concluded that the perceived maternal parenting style was significantly correlated to emotional intelligence i.e. if the score of perceived maternal parenting style increases emotional intelligence will also increase and vice versa.

Findings related to association of perceived maternal parenting style with selected demographic variables among adolescent students shows that association of perceived maternal parenting style with selected demographic variables among adolescent students i.e. family monthly income (c² = 24.735, df = 12 and table value = 21.026) and educational status of mother (c² = 17.779, df = 9 and table value = 16.92) are significantly associated with student’s perceived maternal parenting style whereas no significant association was found between perceived maternal parenting style and other demographic variables.

Findings related to association of level of emotional intelligence with selected demographic variables among adolescent students reveals that association of levels of emotional intelligence with selected demographic variables among adolescent students i.e. gender is significantly associated with student’s level of emotional intelligence (c² = 17.177, df = 4 and table value = 9.488) whereas no significant association was found between level emotional intelligence and other demographic variables.

Table 4: Correlation between Perceived Maternal Parenting Style and Emotional Intelligence among Adolescent Students (N = 100)

*Significant Positive Correlation at the level of significance at 0.05

The present study revealed that majority (71%) of the adolescent students perceived their mother’s parenting style to be authoritative (i.e. high responsiveness and high control), whereas most of the (40%) adolescent students had very high emotional intelligence. The present study findings also revealed that there was significant positive correlation (r = 0.579) between perceived maternal parenting style and emotional intelligence among adolescent students. There was significant association between perceived maternal parenting style with family monthly income and educational status of mother, while emotional intelligence had significant association with gender. The present study concluded that the parents should be demanding as well as responsive for the adolescents to improve their emotional health. Efforts should be taken to teach the parents correct ways of child rearing because a child depends on their parents for the guidance so whatever they learn from their parents they are more likely to apply that on their own children in future. 

Recommendations for the Future Studies

In the view of the findings reported in the present study, the following recommendations are made for further research:

• A study to correlate paternal parenting style and emotional intelligence among adolescent students

• A study to correlate maternal parenting style among housewives and emotional intelligence of their children residing in community

• A study to correlate maternal parenting style among working women and emotional intelligence of their children residing in community

• A comparative study to assess the maternal parenting style among housewives and working women.

• A study to evaluate the effect of socio-cultural factors on parenting style

• A pre-experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of educational aid on the knowledge regarding parenting styles among undergraduate students

A pre-experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of educational aid on the knowledge regarding parenting styles among women residing in rural community. 

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