INFLUENCE OF PARENTING STYLES AND PARENTS’ EDUCATION ON SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1         Background to the Study

Earlier researches posited that the influence of the home upon a child develops in him certain attitudes that are helped or hindered by his experiences in the school and that parents are responsible for the emotional and social adjustment of very young children. Parents and school people or teachers share the responsibility for the behaviour habits of the older child and adolescents. But, nowadays, most of the positive attitudes taught by the parents at home are hindered by some experience gathered by children in school and outside home. Therefore, these experiences gathered give rise to increase in children‟s difficulty in school and social adjustment.

Parental educational level is an important predictor of children‟s educational and behavioural outcomes (Dubow, Boxer,&Huesman, 2009: Davis-Kean, 2005, Dearing, Macartney, &Taylor, 2002; Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, &Klevanov, 1994; Haveman and Wolfe, 1995, Nagin&Tremblay, 2001; Smith, Brooks-Gunn, &Klebanov, 1997). Also on the parents‟ education, its measure usually designates whether or not the youth or students parents attended secondary schools or higher level of education.

Child-rearing practices are socializing processes in any social group that have tremendous influence on the individual child‟s moral judgment and social adjustment. In social climates that are conducive, affectionate, cordial lovely, and peaceful, children from such a home develop moral judgment quickly and behave morally in the process of their development. Danasabe as cited in Mustafa (2008), States that there is an increase of behavioural problem among youths such as delinquency or youth hooligan otherwise referred to as “Yan daba” in northern Nigeria. It is a display of kinds of behaivour which are in disharmony with the established pattern and expectations of the schools and which constitute a deterrent to the youth

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progress, academic achievement, social adjustments and general development. This conduct is disturbing to others, interferes with the normal procedures of schools, the society and result in being nuisance to the society.

INFLUENCE OF PARENTING STYLES AND PARENTS’ EDUCATION ON SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NIGERIA