PARENTING STYLE AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF UNDERGRADUATES IN KWARA STATE, NIGERIA (THE CASE STUDY IS LANDMARK UNIVERSITY IN OMU ARAN)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

          Finding aspects of parenting by parents who serve a vital role in the initial stages of the development of kids is a major component of the search for solutions to the nation's declining standards in education and its standard, which is a problem that personally interests the researcher. Parents are key players in the educational process, and the way they parent and interact with their kids can have an effect on how well those kids think and learn in the early years of life.In this vein, the study presented here was conducted to evaluate the influences that parents' parenting practices have on their children's academic success.

          Over the years, Nigeria has been hailed as an example of democracy, political stability, and peace for the continent of Africa and the West African subregion. Additionally, it experiences swift economic progress and human advancement (Sulaiman, 2012). It is the first nation south of the Sahara to achieve independence from a member of the British Empire. It is a nation that is rich in natural resources and just attained lower-middle income status (UN-Ghana, 2013). Despite all of these advantages, Nigeria nevertheless has a number of complex social and economic issues, including poverty, unemployment, and low standards of education.As much as the government is currently primarily responsible for easing these multifaceted issues, the youth will ultimately bear this burden. If the youth obtain high-quality education and have their cognitive development as children, this would be conceivable.

          Given the challenges that the educational system is prone to, as seen by the periodic shifts in students' academic performance on national exams, the country has not been successful in providing high-quality education.Studies have revealed that parenting and parenting practices have an impact on students' academic achievement in addition to the underlying issues that impede quality education.This is due to the fact that parenting style has an impact on a child's cognitive development, which can either develop favorably or poorly and have an impact on educational success. In order to produce the necessary human resources who can participate in development initiatives and help solve the challenges that plague the country, good parenting and high-quality education are essential.

          Therefore, as demonstrated by the Ecological Systems theory by Bronfenbrenner (1979) and the Social Structure and Anomie theory by Merton (1968), parents are crucial to their children's growth. Numerous studies have demonstrated that parents do in fact have significant and long-lasting influence on their children's capacity for happiness, and that some parenting approaches tend to foster this development while others have the opposite effect.In other words, parenting, which is the control of a child's behavior and development with the goal of enabling them to live a socially desirable life, adapt to their environment, and pursue their own goals (Bradley & Caldwell, 1995), calls for specific parenting behaviors that either tend to promote a child's healthy development and happiness or may rather have the opposite effect.Huxley (2001) defined parenting styles as the way in which parents express their opinions about how to be a good or terrible parent by adopting parenting styles that they learnt from their parents because they are stuck with nothing else to do and because they believe their way of parenting is the best way.The reverse of their parents' parenting methods may be adopted by some parents if they find their parents' methods ineffective, therefore this may not always be the case.

          After performing a research on more than 100 preschool-aged children and identifying four significant parenting dimensions, Baumrind (1967) introduced the idea of parenting styles. These characteristics included rules of conduct, modes of communication, warmth and nurturing, and standards of maturity and authority.Baumrind proposed that the majority of parents exhibit one of three main parenting styles based on these four dimensions. These parenting philosophies are authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive.Additional research by Maccoby and Martin (1983) based on the demandingness and responsiveness aspects of parenting, which are modifications of Baumrind's dimensions as well, proposed the establishment of a fourth parenting style. This parenting approach is one of neglect or rejection.Parental responsiveness, also known as parental warmth or support, is the degree to which parents consciously promote uniqueness, self-control, and self-assertion by being aware of, accommodating of, and obedient to children's unique needs and expectations.On the other side, parental demandingness, also known as behavioral control, describes the expectations parents place on their children to integrate into the family through their demands for maturity, supervision, disciplinary efforts, and willingness to confront the child who disobeys.

          The kind of parenting approach used, whether it is the same or different from that of the parents, and consistency or irregularity in enforcing the parenting dimensions affects how children develop and their personality traits throughout life.Various outcomes in children, including issues with their psychological, emotional, social, and personality development (aggression), as well as cognitive development issues that may impair their academic achievement, have repeatedly been linked to parenting methods and styles (Turner, et. al, 2009). Students raised in authoritative households tend to be competent and obedient, but they also score lower in happiness, social skills, and self-esteem. Children raised by authoritative parents are more likely to be content, capable, and successful adults (Maccoby, 1992). Students raised by permissive parents frequently score poorly on happiness and self-control scales. These kids typically perform poorly in school and are more prone to have issues with authority. The least desirable parenting practices are found in every area of life. These kids typically exhibit poor self-control, low self-esteem, and inferior competence to their peers (Cherry, 2012).

          There are a ton of research that build on Baumrind's (1967) work (Turner et al., 2009). Generally speaking, authoritative parenting that places a premium on being both responsive and demanding tends to be more effective at fostering higher academic performance (Reitman et al., 2002; Turner et al., 2009). However, over the years in most studies, it was discovered that kids from permissive, authoritarian, and neglectful parenting homes had poor academic performance due to inconsistently enforcing the dimensions of low disciplinary strategies, communication styles, warmth and nourishment, and expectations of maturity and control.

          However, there have been differences in parenting approaches and high student performance along racial or ethnic lines. Blair and Qian (1998) discovered in their study that parental control, a component of an authoritarian parenting style, was positively associated with high performance among Chinese adolescents. This contrasts with research in Western societies where authoritative parenting style has been found to be positively associated with students' academic success.Similar to this, Barnhart et al. (2013) discovered that permissive parenting style had a substantial impact on students' academic performance and high performance among them when comparing the academic performance of American and Indian students.

          Up until recently, the majority of studies conducted in Nigeria on community involvement in school activities found that doing so was worthwhile and had positive effects on the infrastructure of the schools as well as the availability of resources for the students' academic success (Nyarko, 2011). In other words, these studies emphasized the need of community involvement in schools and the need for families, who make up communities, to be interested in their wards' academic pursuits since this helps to improve their wards' academic achievement.However, the limited research on parenting styles and students' academic performance in Nigeria revealed a connection between the two factors and also discovered that good performance was linked to an authoritative parenting style among students in the two different study locations (Addai, 2010; Nyarko, 2011).

          The researcher therefore expected that parental parenting styles, which are characterized by various disciplinary techniques, communication styles, warmth and nurturing, and expectations of maturity and control, would link to and produce various academic outcomes among pupils.The study also predicted that an authoritative parenting style would be linked to high or good performance. This thesis serves as the foundation for the current study, which looks especially at undergraduates at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria, and their parenting practices and academic achievement.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

          Given the nation's declining educational standards and quality, as well as the efforts of succeeding governments to address these issues through educational reforms and the significant financial resources invested in doing so, one might have anticipated that by now, the issues with our educational system that continue to be evident in the poor academic performance of senior high school students would have been resolved.Since the government bears a large portion of the responsibility in this situation, all parties involved—especially parents—should be concerned. Over time, the declining standards in education have been exacerbated by a lack of participation and acknowledgement of the crucial responsibilities that parents and families frequently play in developing and putting these reforms into action.This is true because every society's major socialization tool for children is their family, which also serves as their first point of contact. As a result of the parenting approaches that these parents embrace and utilize to raise their children, personality traits, social competence, psychological, emotional, physical, and educational development of children occur within the family.

          The kind of parenting approach used in biologically intact or single-parent homes, as well as the common, complementary, or conflicting styles and dimensions that are perceived by students based on their demographic characteristics, as well as the consistency or irregularity with which parents enforce the dimensions of parenting, affects children in all spheres of their lives, especially academic competition.In other words, it causes youngsters to become unstable and confused (Frazier, 2013), which negatively impacts their academic and developmental outcomes. Poor academic competency and cognitive systems development would result in subpar student performances.

          Given the aforementioned issues, this study looked at how parenting practices affect students' academic performance at Landmark University in order to identify the parenting practices that encourage strong academic performance and to make recommendations on how to improve parenting practices as well as the standards of education and quality in Kwara State, Nigeria.

1.3 Research Question

This study answered the following questions;

1. What effect does having an authoritarian parenting style have on students' academic achievement at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria?

2. How much does a strict parenting style influence children's academic achievement at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria?

3. What impact do indulgent parental practices have on students' academic achievement at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria?

4. How much does a neglectful parenting style effect children's academic achievement at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria?

1.4 Objectives of the Study

          Theobjectiveof this study is to examined the parenting style and academic performance of undergraduates specifically in Landmark university in Omu Aran in Kwara State, Nigeria. Other specific objectives of the study are;

1. To determine how students' academic success at Nigeria's Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, is influenced by their parents' strict parenting methods

2. To research the impact of an authoritative parenting style on children's academic achievement at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria.

3. To determine how indulgent parental practices influence students' academic achievement at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria

4. To evaluate the impact of neglectful parenting on the academic performance of students at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria.

1.5 Justification/Significance of the Study

The purpose of this study was to determine how different parenting styles affect the academic achievement of children in secondary schools of Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria.This is a personal interest of the researcher, given the country's deteriorating educational standards and the necessity to discover answers to the challenges in order to promote high levels of quality education.

The study's findings will assist parents in understanding the critical role they must play in their children's education in order to assure success. It will also assist them in determining which parenting style is best for their children and how their engagement through responsiveness and demandingness can contribute to their children's success.

Many studies, as shown, support the critical role that parents play in their children's educational attainment and that their participation both at school and at home contributes to positive development in their children. However, there are few studies of this type in Ghana, thus this study will go a long way toward contributing to and filling gaps in the literature on parenting styles and academic achievement in general.

As previously stated, studies on parenting styles in Ghana have primarily concentrated on the three parenting styles first described by Baumrind (1967) based on the four characteristics of parenting she modeled, neglecting the neglectful parenting style. However, it is critical to study all four parenting styles to establish the nature of the relationship and how this relationship affects student performance.Given that the cultural backdrop of Nigeria differs from that of the Western world, where most studies have found poor performance to be connected with a neglectful parenting style, it is critical that research be conducted to discover whether the data reflect such perspectives.

Finally, the findings of this study will have theoretical, parenting, and educational implications because they will help contribute to policy making in terms of raising awareness among parents about the impact of their parenting styles on their children's performance and the need to garner the necessary parental support for their children's education in order to improve students' educational fortunes and the country's educational standard.

1.6 Scope of the Study

          Several studies have sought to identify the characteristics that influence pupils' academic achievement. These elements include parental style, student attitude toward learning, instructor and teaching aspects, cultural environment, and socio-demographic characteristics of parents and students.Many people have discovered a link between these elements and student academic achievement; however, others have not.

          Though many of these characteristics are relevant, this study focuses on the effects of parenting styles on the academic performance of Senior High School students at Landmark University in Omu Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria.

1.7 Operational Definition of Term

Authoritarian parenting style: The process of parenting style showing that children are expected to obey their parents’ orders Authoritative parenting style: The act of believing that children are expected to obey authority and rules without being imposive . Neglectful parenting style: Failing to take care of children

Indulgent parenting style: The state of doing just whatever one wants.

Academic performance: Examination result at the end of an academic programme in the school. In this study, the West African Senior School Certificate examination result is used.