Incongruent Parenting Styles : Effects on the Personality of College Students

This study examined whether incongruent parenting styles in intact and divorced families led to increased adjustment difficulties. Participants were ninety-five female and forty-eight male students from the Fort Hays State University campus. Twenty of the participants left the gender question blank and thus their gender is unknown. Parenting style incongruency in intact and divorced families was not found to have an effect on the nine adjustment difficulties. Participants whose parents had joint custody did have higher levels of anxiety and depression than participants whose families were intact or who lived with mostly mother, mostly father, solely mother, and solely father. The results of this data showed mother’s warmth to be negatively associated with academic problems, interpersonal problems, suicidal ideation, and family problems, indicating that levels of problems decrease with higher levels of nurturing by the mother. Different combinations of parenting styles did have a significant effect on anxiety and family problems. Participants who reported their mother as being permissive-neglectful and their father as being authoritative scored significantly higher on the anxiety scale of the CAS than participants who reported their parents to have engaged in other combinations of parenting styles. Participants who reported their mother and father as having an authoritarian parenting style scored significantly higher on the family problems scale than participants who reported their parents to engage in other combinations of parenting styles