The role of parenting styles and socio-economic status in parents’ knowledge of child development

Abstract

Early childhood development (ECD) has been recognised to be the most important contributor to long-term social and emotional development. Therefore, positive parenting is paramount to foster quality parent–child interaction. Previous research shows that for parents to adopt a positive parenting style, some degree of parental knowledge is required. The aim of this study was to compare the relationship between knowledge of child development and parenting styles in low and high socio-economic groups of parents in ECD centres. A crosssectional study was conducted using a correlation-comparative research design. The sample consisted of N = 140 parents with children between two and five years old from low and high socio-economic groups. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation were used to analyse the data. The findings also show that there is no correlation between knowledge of child development and authoritative parenting styles. However, correlations do exist between the other variables.