Date of Award:

5-2020

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Psychology

Committee Chair(s)

Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Committee

Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Committee

Renee V. Galliher

Committee

Gretchen G. Peacock

Committee

Tyler Renshaw

Committee

Ryan Seedall

Abstract

Parenting styles are comprised from three dimensions: warmth, autonomy granting, and demandingness. These dimensions combined form four parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful. Forty-nine Puerto Rican families with children 6-11 years participated. Families engaged in several tasks that were coded using the Parenting Style Observation Rating Scale and child outcomes were measured using the Child Behavior Checklist. Overall, parents received high ratings in warmth, autonomy granting, and supportive demandingness, and low scores in nonsupportive demandingness. There were some differences between parents, with mothers exhibiting higher levels of warmth with girls than boys, and higher levels of autonomy granting and supportive demandingness when compared to fathers. The majority of the parents exhibited an authoritative parenting style (57% of mothers and44.9% of fathers), followed by protective parenting (26% of mothers and 28.6% of fathers). Results al so showed that higher levels of supportive demandingness were associated with less child behavioral issues. No statistically significant results were found for parenting styles and child outcomes, parent gender, and/or child sex. Several methodological issues were present that prevented the comparison between the individual and dyadic coding methods.

These results suggest that supportive demandingness might be an important factor to target when providing treatment to Puerto Rican families. It also suggests that there might be differences to consider when working with mothers versus fathers. Furthermore, it indicates that there might be other parenting styles, not currently used by previous research, that might increase the accuracy of our understanding of parenting styles within Latino families. This research aimed to fill the gap in the literature regarding Puerto Rican parenting and its relationship to child outcomes.

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Psychology Commons

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