Different Parenting Styles Used by Parents of Students in Public Boarding Secondary Schools in Kiambu East District

Abstract

Parenting is a process that requires thoughtful attention, patience and good understanding of the child. The parenting style a parent applies on a child determines the type of discipline a child will display in school and well as in life. The parenting styles used by parents of students in Public Boarding Secondary Schools in Kiambu East District had been blamed for the discipline problems manifested by students in the District hence the need to study the parenting styles used by parents of students in the district. The study targeted a population of 11,296 students in public secondary schools in the District with the accessible population of 1060 form four students in public boarding secondary schools in the District. Using Simple Random Sampling, a sample of 280 students and 28 teachers was selected to participate in the study. An ex post facto survey research design was used. One set of questionnaire for students was used to collect the needed information. The instruments were validated using five experts from the faculty of Education. The instruments were piloted in the neighboring Kiambaa Division to establish reliability. Data was randomly split into two sets and analyzed. Reliability co-efficient of 0.74 and was obtained and accepted. With the help of SPSS, data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency tables, percentages and graphs. The findings revealed that the major parenting style used by parents was authoritative parenting though other parents were authoritarian and permissive. A few parents were negligent.