A Study of Relationship between Perceived Parenting Styles and Social Maturity among Urban Adolescents

This research aims at finding out gender difference in parenting style for adolescents in urban setting and is relationship with their social maturity Two scales namely. Parenting Scale by Bharadwaj Sharma and Garg (1998) and A Comprehensive Scale for Social Maturity by Pal Roma (1986) were used for this purpose. The sample was taken from Kolhapur city in Maharashtra and the number was 80 (40 Males and 40 Females). From observations, it is found that mother's perceived parenting style is significantly different in case of urban adolescent boys and girls(z=2.59). But in case of father's perceived parenting style, there found no significant difference (z=1.63). For urban adolescents, the correlation between social maturity and mother's parenting style was .6 (p<.01). The correlation coefficient between father's parenting style and urban adolescents'social maturity was .52 (p<.01). In case of boys, the correlation between their social maturity and mother's parenting style was .63 (p<.01) and for father's parenting style, it was .58 (p<.01). In case of girls, these respective values were .47 (p<.01) and .41 (p<.01). The correlation between mother's parenting style and father's parenting style for urban adolescents was also calculated. In case of all urban adolescents, it was .38 (p<.01). In case of urban boys, the value was .2 and was non-significant. In case of urban girls, this value was .54 and was significant at .01 level.