Parental Self-Efficacy as a Protective Factor against Dysfunctional Parenting among Parents of Adolescents

Abstract

Self-efficacy is known to influence how individuals think, feel, and behave, and it is considered a powerful antecedent to the quality of parent-child interactions. The current study was conducted to determine the level of parenting self-efficacy among parents of adolescents and establish its relationship with their parenting behaviour. The research was descriptive research with 100 father-mother dyads of adolescents between the age of 13 and 15 years with matched criteria were selected from Jorhat district, Assam using three-staged sampling. The Woolgar’s Brief Parental Self-Efficacy Scale was used to assess parenting self-efficacy of parents and Parenting Scale of Arnold et al. was used to identify parenting behaviour of the respondents. The study was statistically analysed with frequency distribution, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, and correlation coefficient. The results revealed that fathers showed more laxness in their parenting and mothers were more over-reactive and verbose in nature. Moreover, mothers had significantly higher levels of parenting self-efficacy than fathers. Furthermore, parenting self-efficacy was negatively correlated with laxness and verbosity for both parents, indicating that higher levels of perceived parental self-efficacy were related to lower levels of dysfunctional parenting behaviour in parents of adolescents. This study recommends that parenting interventions should focus on strengthening parental self-efficacy as greater parental confidence can promote nurturing parenting behaviours among parents.