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Parenting Style Impacts Kids' Attitudes on Marriage, Family

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on PsychCentral.

Your parents’ particular style of raising you may have had an effect on your perceptions of marriage and family, according to a new Japanese study. The findings show that a supportive upbringing is linked to higher marriage rates and a greater desire for more children.

The researchers looked at five typical parenting styles in Japan — supportive, strict (tiger), indulgent, uninvolved, and abusive — and investigated how each type affects grown children’s levels of happiness and perceptions of marriage and family.

  • Supportive: high or average levels of independence, high levels of trust, high levels of interest shown in child, large amount of time spent together;
  • Strict (tiger): Low levels of independence, medium-to-high levels of trust, strict or fairly strict, medium-to-high levels of interest shown in child, large amount of rules;
  • Indulgent: High or average levels of trust, not strict at all, time spent together is average or longer than average;
  • Uninvolved: Low levels of interest shown in child, not strict at all, small amount of time spent together, few rules;
  • Abusive: Low levels of interest shown in child, low levels of independence, low levels of trust, strict.

The study was led by Professor Nishimura Kazuo at Kobe University and Professor Yagi Tadashi at Doshisha University. The researchers used data from an online survey of 10,000 people carried out in January 2016 with Rakuten Research, Inc.

The researchers analyzed the effects of different parenting styles on the participants’ attitudes towards their mothers and fathers, and how enthusiastic they were about starting families of their own.

They found that people who had received a supportive upbringing were most likely to see their own father or mother as the ideal, whereas respondents who had experienced abusive parenting styles were least likely to view their own parents as positive models for themselves or potential partners.

Marriage rates were higher among people whose ideal partner or self was represented by their own father or mother, and this group also wanted more children.

The findings also show that, for both men and women, the supportive approach to parenting produced the highest achievements in income, happiness levels, and academic achievement for children.

Source: PsychCentral
https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/02/06/parenting-style-impacts-kids-attitudes-on-marriage-family/116101.html