Gifted Students’ Perceptions of Parenting Styles

Abstract

Children whose parents are warm and responsive yet also set limits and have reasonable expectations for their children tend to have better outcomes than their peers whose parents show less warmth and responsiveness, have low expectations, or both. Parenting behavior is related to family race and children’s sex, age, and cognitive ability. However, there is no work that examines how children’s cognitive abilities are related to their perceptions of their mothers’ and fathers’ parenting styles and the extent to which these relationships are moderated by race, sex, and age in a sample of gifted students. Participants (N = 332, ages 9-17 years) attended a summer residential program for gifted students and completed the Parental Authority Questionnaire and the verbal battery of the Cognitive Abilities Test. Three main findings emerged. First, factor analyses provided support for the use of the Parent Authority Questionnaire with gifted populations. Second, findings from regression analyses as well as examinations of mean differences by cognitive ability level were consistent with earlier studies suggesting that more cognitively able students were likely to perceive their parents as employing a flexible (i.e., authoritative) parenting style. Finally, consonant with earlier studies with nonidentified populations, age, sex, and race were associated with parenting styles as reported by this group of identified gifted students. Results provide further support for the notion that authoritative parenting promotes positive outcomes for children, particularly those who have been identified as gifted.

Big Five Personality Factors, Perceived Parenting Styles, and Perfectionism among Academically Gifted Students

“…Findings of the second regression analysis indicated that negative perfectionism as measured by concern over mistakes, high parental expectations, parental criticism, and doubting of actions subscales was predicted by maternal authoritarian style, neuroticism, and paternal authoritarian style. This findings support previous studies that found correlation between positive perfectionism and authoritative parenting style, openness to experience, and conscientiousness; and correlation between negative perfectionism and authoritarian parenting style and neuroticism (Besharat et al, 2011;Biran & Reese, 2007;Kenney-Benson & Pomerantz, 2005;Rudasill, Adelson, Callahan, Houlihan, & Keizer, 2013). However, the result of this study showed that academically gifted students have different perceptions towards their parents; where maternal parenting style contributes 49.3% to the development of negative perfectionism and paternal parenting style contribute 44.3% to the development of positive perfectionism.…”

Parenting Styles and Adjustment in Gifted Children

“…Authoritarian parenting is related to greater psychological difficulties in adolescents (Dwairy, 2004), higher levels of perfectionism (Miller, Lambert, & Speirs Neumeister, 2012), and insecure attachment style in adults (Speirs Neumeister & Finch, 2006). Authoritative parenting is linked to higher cognitive performance in adolescents (Rudasill, Adelson, Callahan, Houlihan, & Keizer, 2013) and a secure attachment style in adults (Speirs Neumeister & Finch, 2006). Findings about the permissive style, however, do not always support the literature on parenting styles.…”

Intellectual Giftedness and Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents

“…First, approaches to defining and operationalizing giftedness have varied considerably across studies, often in terms of the extent to which an emphasis is placed on academic achievement versus cognitive abilities. As such, whereas some studies have sampled participants based on their enrolment in special “gifted” classes or educational programs (Eklund et al, 2015; Stornelli, Flett, & Hewitt, 2009), others have done so on the basis of achievement-based assessments (Harrison & Van Haneghan, 2011) or IQ tests (Dwairy, 2004; Rudasill, Adelson, Callahan, Houlihan, & Keizer, 2012). Second, whereas some studies have investigated rates of socio-emotional dysfunction within groups of children and adolescents identified as gifted (Zeidner & Schleyer, 1999), others have compared children and adolescents identified as gifted with those identified as nongifted (Guignard, Jacquet, & Lubart, 2012; Riaz, Shahzad, Riaz, & Khanam, 2013; Vlahovic-Stetic, Vidovic, & Arambasic, 1999).…”