Parent Rearing Practice, Sex, and Child’s Social Adjustment in Magelang, Indonesia

Abstract

This article emphasizes studies to: (1) examine the effect of authoritarian, democratic, and permissive parenting on children's social adjustment, and (2) examine the ability of social adjustment from a gender perspective. The study subjects were 240, consisting of 120 boys and 120 girls. The method of collecting data on children's social adjustment used observation with time sampling techniques, while the data on parent rearing practice used a questionnaire. The analysis technique in this research used Structural Equation Modeling SEM) with the Partial Least Square (PLS) technique with the help of the SmartPLS 2.0 application program. The results showed that the children's social adjustment can be explained jointly by the parenting style of authoritarian, democratic, and permissive parents by 78.5%. Authoritarian parenting has an effect on children's social adjustment as indicated by the t value of 2.685 (p <0.05), democratic parenting of 8,043 (p <0.05), and permissive parenting of 1,990 (p <0.05). The effective contribution of democratic parenting to children's adjustment is the highest compared to authoritarian and democratic parenting (Effective contribution of democratic parenting: 48.6%, authoritarian parenting 16.1%, and permissive parenting 13.8%).