Thesis Title: Perceived Parenting Styles, Family Conflict and Attitude of Unmarried Adults towards Marriage
Student Name: Maryum Yousaf
Supervisor: Rafia Rafique, PhD
Degree: MSc
Year: 2016-2018
Abstract
The research was conducted to investigate whether family conflict predicts the attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage. Another objective of the study was to find out whether perceived parenting styles mediate attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage. It was hypothesized that family conflict would be negative predictor of positive attitude towards marriage and parenting styles would mediate the relationship between family conflict and attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage. The sample was drawn through convenient sampling technique and comprised of N = 180 with 90 women and 90 men) with the age ranges of 18 to 30 years recruited from 3 public sector universities of Lahore. For assessment, Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ; Buri, 1991), the Asian and American Family Conflict Scale (Richard & Kim, 2000) and the General Attitude towards Marriage Scale (GATM; Park & Rosen, 2013) were used. Bivariate correlation analysis showed that there was a negative relationship between perceived parenting styles (mother) and attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage and there was a negative relationship between family conflict and attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage. Mediation analysis using the hierarchical multiple regression showed that mother authoritative and permissive parenting styles mediated the relationship between family conflict and attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage whereas mothers’ authoritarian parenting style and father’s parenting styles (permissive, authoritarian and authoritative) did not mediate the relationship between family conflict and attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage. Family conflict negatively predicts the attitude of unmarried adults towards marriage. The findings of the study can be utilized for psycho-education of the parents.
Keywords: Perceived parenting styles, family conflict, attitude, unmarried adults.
