Date of Award
Summer 2014
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology
First Advisor
Bardwell, Rebecca
Second Advisor
Melchert, Timothy
Third Advisor
Edwards, Lisa
Abstract
Parenting styles create different social environments in the lives of children within the home. Many studies have investigated the effects of parenting style on children's emotional development and behavior (Liem, Cavell, & Lustig, 2010; Pezzella, 2010; Schaffer, Clark, & Jeglic, 2009; Steward & Bond, 2002; Timpano, Keough, Mahaffey, Schmidt, & Abramowitz, 2010) as well as differences in parenting across cultures (Keels, 2009; Paulussen-Hoogeboom, Stams, Hermanns, Peetsma, &Wittenboer, 2008). Limited research has been conducted on parenting style and religion, however, and especially in Muslim families, and among Muslim American families in particular. There is also a lack of research that focuses on the effects of all four parenting styles (i.e. authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful) on child development in Muslim families. Most scholars focus on authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles in their studies and disregard the permissive and neglectful parenting styles (Mayseless, Scharf, & Sholt, 2003; Takeuchi & Takeuchi, 2008). The present study focused on associations between parenting style and measures of emotional and behavioral problems in Muslim American children. No statistically significant differences were found in emotional and behavior problems between the various parenting groups. Consistency in parenting was also not associated with emotional and behavioral difficulty scores. Authoritative parenting was found to be the most frequent parenting style among Muslim fathers in the study sample, while authoritarian parenting was the most frequently reported parenting style among the Muslim mothers in the sample.