The impact of perception of consistency and inconsistency in parenting style on pro-social motives of adolescents

INTRODUCTION

Adolescence is the formative stage of life for establishing values and cultural orientations (Erikson, 1968; Rohan, Zanna, 1996). Alper (Vander, 1987) suggested that through cognitive moral development, adolescents build up internalized standards for behaviour. These internalized standards of behaviour guide them to act in certain ways. Researchers believe that socialisation and relationship with parents significantly influence in creating constructive and positive behaviors among adolescents (Barnes, Hoffman, Welte, 2006). Pro-social behaviour is one of them. Pro-social behavior is defined as a behavior that is primarily aimed at benefiting others (Carlo, Ronadall, 2002; Eisenberg, Fabes, 1998). Some pro-social behaviour is extrinsically motivated whereas some are intrinsically motivated. Extrinsic pro-social behaviour is motivated by a desire to gain the approval and respect of others and increase one’s self-worth in the eye’s of others. Intrinsic pro-social behaviour is motivated by empathy and internalized norms/ principles consistent with helping others. Boehnke, Silbereisen, Eisenberg, Reykows- ki, and Palmonari (1989) identified six motives, which operate in pro-social behavior. These six motives are hedonism, conformity, self- interest, other’s-orientation, task-orientation and empathy. From the above motives, task-oriented, other’s-oriented, and empathy motives show intrinsic motives, and the rest indicate extrinsic motives.

Bronfenbrenner (1994) emphasized the importance of various levels of environment that influence individual growth and behavior. Mainly, he focused on micro system that influences children largely. Micro system includes the immediate surroundings of the child such as family. Parents as a primary socialisation agents are critical in the development of pro-social predisposition among children and adolescents. Socialisation theorists witnessed the way in which parents play an important role in promoting and fostering pro-social behaviors among children and adolescents (Bandura, 1986; Hoffman, 2000; Staub, 1979). Researchers determined that the styles used by parents in rearing children have an effect on the children’s development of pro-social behavior (Lam, 2012).

Developmental scholars have built up quite large knowledge base concerning two major dimensions of parenting styles: responsiveness and demandingness (Barber, Stolz, Olsen, 2005; Baumrind, 1991). Responsiveness can be defined as the presence of positive affects, and support in parent­child relationships. Demandingness refers to the degree of strictness, behavioral rules, and expectations imposed on children by parents. The combination of these two dimensions results in the formation of four parenting styles: authoritarian (high on de­mandingness and low on responsiveness), authoritative (high on both responsiveness and demandingness), permissiveness (high on responsiveness and low on demanding­ness) and neglectful (low on both responsiveness and demandingness).

There is clear agreement as to the importance of maternal warmth on the adolescent’s overall development. A positive relation between maternal warmth/ support or sensitivity and children’s and adolescents’ altruistic and pro-social responding was obtained (Asbury, Dunn, Pike, Plomin, 2003; Bryant, Crockenberg, 1980; Deater-Deck- ard, Dunn, O’Connor, Davies, Golding, 2001). Researchers have indicated negative relationship between punitive techniques of discipline used by parents and children’s altruistic / pro-social behaviour (Asbury, Dunn, Pike, Plomin, 2003; Bar-Tal, Nadler,Blechman, 1980; Dlugokinski, Firestone, 1974; Krevans, Gibbs, 1996). Research in the field of parenting style has often focused on the effect of the mother’s style, or has considered the average score from both parents. In the first case, it is assumed that the father’s style is either similar to the mother’s; in the second case, the attitudes of mothers and fathers are diluted into the single score. Studies that do consider both parents (Mestre, Samper, Frias, 2004; Mc­Nally, Eisenberg, Harris, 1991) have shown differences in how the child qualifies his or her relationship with the father and with the mother. In light of these differences, identifying inconsistencies in parenting styles has arisen as a complementary line of research in this area (Dwairy, 2008; Len- gua, 2006). Winsler, Madigan, and Aquilino (2005) indicated that inter-parental agreement on child-rearing practices is becoming more important in the research on child development. Maccoby and Martin (1983) confirmed that applying an authoritative parenting style results in positive outcomes in children (Winsler et al., 2005). Simons and Conger (2007) indicated that if both parents develop authoritative style, its beneficial effects are multiplied. By contrast, some authors have investigated whether the presence of only one authoritative parent can have beneficial effects on the children. If this is so, there would be a buffering effect when at least one of the parents shows an authoritative style (Fletcher, Steinberg, Sellers, 1999; Simons, Conger, 2007). The benefit of at least one parent with an authoritative style is another aspect that converges with and qualifies the analysis of consistency and inconsistency between the two parenting styles.

In this line, Ryan, Martin and Brooks- Gunn (2006) suggested that there is a benefit in the cognitive development of small children when both parents, or at least one of them, displays a support-based style. Oli­va, Parra, and Arranz (2008) affirmed that higher rates of psychosocial adjustment in adolescents are seen when both parents are perceived as authoritative, followed by the group where at least one of the parents displays authoritative style. According to these authors, even though disciplinary inconsistency is considered to be a source of negative repercussions on children, the benefits of having at least one authoritative parent seem to exceed the negative effects that arise from lack of agreement. In addition to this general confirmation, certain qualifying statements have been made. For example, Hoeve, Dubas, Gerris, Van der Laan and Smeenk (2011) showed that the presence of at least one authoritative parent diminishes the frequency of the adolescent child becoming involved in delinquent acts, regardless of the other parent’s style. In addition, when one parent exhibits a neglectful style, the child’s level of delinquency depends on the style exhibited by the other parent. It seems logical to think that the effect of having one authoritative parent would not be equal in all the cases; instead, it would depend on the parenting style of the other parent. Consequently, it seems clear that the parenting styles of both parents must be investigated (Torrente, Vazso- nyi, 2008) in order to understand whether consistency always facilitates child’s development or sometimes inconsistency in parenting style can compensate or accentuate child’s development.

Research in this sphere seeks to analyze possible inconsistencies between the parenting styles of mother and father, putting forward a general hypothesis that, consistency in parenting style is always beneficial regardless of the predominant style and inconsistencies will be harmful (Berkien, Louwerse, Verhulst, Van der Ende, 2012; Lengua, Kovacs, 2005; Tildesley, Andrews, 2008). Nonetheless, the effect of parenting style dimension specific consistency and inconsistency on adolescent’s pro-social motive has not yet explored. Exploring dimension specific consistency as well as inconsistency in parenting style is equally important especially for adolescents because it not only provides us an insight on differential effect on dimension specific consistency but also helps us to get an overview on how dimension specific inconsistency works. Inconsistency in parenting style is inevitable and unavoidable. So it is utmost important to know the effect of dimension specific inconsistency in parenting style.

This study sets two fold objectives. The first objective is to examine the nature of self­reported perception of pro-social motives of adolescents. The second objective is to analyze whether consistency (parenting styles concur) or inconsistency (parenting styles differ) in perceived parenting styles influence the pro-social motive of adolescents.

METHOD

Participants:

The sample was composed of 610 adolescents (310 boys and 300 girls) aged between 16-18 years (mean = 17.07 and standard deviation = 1.02). Adolescents were drawn from nine different schools (five coeducation, two boys’ and two girls’) of Kolkata of West Bengal in India. A stratified random sampling method was used for the selection of boys and girls. Simple random sampling without replacement (SRSWOR) method was used for selecting students from each stratum (boys and girls). Most of the students were from middle-socio economic status.

Measures:

The following measures were used in this study:

• Personal Data sheet: Certain personal information about respondents included in the sample of research is useful and important for research. Here also, for collecting such important information, personal data sheet was prepared. With the help of this personal data sheet, the information about age, gender, total monthly income of family and nature of the school were collected.

• Pro-social Motivation Questionnaire (PSMQ): — This was originally developed by Silberstein, Boehnke, and Reykowsky (1986). It consists of 24 story situations in which there is an opportunity for pro-social action. In half of these situations, the subjects are described as having helped, in the other 12 scenarios, the subjects refrained from helping. In this study, the researcher considered the 12 scenarios, which are leading to helping. Subjects rated each scenario on a five-point scale ranging from “not at all = 0; probably not = 1; perhaps = 2; most probably = 3; and quite surely = 4”. The ratings of subjects on all the 12 scenarios were added for each of the six motives (or scales) and hence scores were recorded for each of the following sub-scales:

♦    Hedonism

♦    Self-Orientation

♦    Conformity

♦    Task- orientation

♦    Other’s-orientation

♦    Empathy

Thus, the score of one sub scale ranges from 0 to 48. However, the values of the subscale could not be added together to get the extrinsic (hedonism, self-orientation and conformity) and the intrinsic (task- oriented, other’s-oriented, and empathy) pro-social motive score of a subject, because
all these subclass have not equal strengths to predict the intrinsic or extrinsic motives. The Cronbach’s alphas for hedonism, self­orientation, conformity, task-orientation, other’s-orientation and empathy motive subscales for the present study were calculated and found to be 0.73, 0.77, 0.74, 0.75, 0.78 and 0.75, respectively.

• Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ): It was developed by Leman (2005) to measure the parenting style as perceived by adolescents. The scale was based on the scale developed by Buri (1991), which adopted three parenting styles of Baumrind (1966). The PAQ scale consists of 21 items. There are four response options for each question. The Cronbach’s alphas for authoritarian, authoritative and permissive parenting style subscales for the present study were calculated and were found to be 0.75, 0.72 and 0.76, respectively.

RESULTS

To study the first objective, means and standard deviations of different dimensions of pro-social motive of adolescents were calculated. The means and standard deviations of pro-social motive subscales are presented in Table 1.

Table 1 displays that adolescents reported empathy as commonly observed type of pro-social motive followed by other’s-ori- ented, task-oriented, self-interest, conformity and hedonistic motive.

Independent sample t-test was conducted to examine gender differences in different types of pro-social motive and is presented in Table 2.

Table 2 depicts that there was statistically significant mean difference in conformity (t= 5.70, p<0.05), other’s-oriented (t = 4.74, p<0.05) and empathy (t = 3.73, p<0.05) motive between boys and girls. Girls scored higher on other’s-oriented and empathy motive of pro-social behavior than boys. In contrast, boys scored significantly higher on conformity than girls.

Independent sample t-tests were calculated to analyze the difference in different dimensions of pro-social motives with respect to the perception of parenting style consistency (father and mother exhibit the same parenting style) and inconsistency (father and mother exhibit different parenting styles) and the results are presented in Table 3.

Descriptive statistics of Pro-social motives of adolescents

Table 2

Mean, SD and t-value of different dimensions of pro-social motive by gender

Note: ** Significant at 0.01 level

Table 3

Mean, SDs (in parentheses) and t-values in different dimensions of pro-social motive by consistent and inconsistent parenting style

Perceived parenting style

The differences in different dimensions of pro-social motive observed between consistent and inconsistent situations, however, none of these differences was found to be significant. The closer scrutiny reveals that adolescents who perceived a consistent parenting style between mothers and fathers showed a bit higher levels of intrinsic pro-social motives than adolescents who attributed inconsistent parenting styles to parents. The opposite trend is evident in case of extrinsic pro-social motives.

In the Table 3, parenting style consistency was measured if father and mother exhibit the same parenting style, that means all authoritarian —authoritarian dyad, authoritative — authoritative dyad and permissive — permissive dyad are included in the consistency category. Next, we examine the difference in different dimensions of prosocial motives due to perception of parental style consistency with respect to a specific parenting style. Thus, we determine the differential effect of authoritarian — authoritarian dyad, authoritative — authoritative dyad, and permissive — permissive dyad on different dimensions of pro-social motive instead of combining consistency across all parenting styles and the results are presented in Table 4.

Table 4 indicates statistically significant differences in every dimension of prosocial motive as a function of consistency in a specific dimension of parenting style. A post-hoc comparisons using Tukey’s HSD (honest significant difference) test revealed that adolescents who perceived consistent authoritarian style of parents scored significantly higher on extrinsic pro-social motive dimension than adolescents raised in any other family type. Adolescents from consistent authoritative families scored significantly higher on intrinsic pro-social motives than adolescents from consistent permissive and authoritarian families.

Mean, SDs (in parentheses) and F-values in different dimensions
of pro-social motive in families with consistent parenting style

Table 5

Mean, SDs (in parentheses) and F-values in different dimensions of pro-social motive in families with inconsistent parenting style

Note. AN= Authoritarian, AV= Authoritative and PM= Permissive

** Significant at 0.01 level

Differences are statistically significant when the superscripts differ from each other

In order to analyze the differences in different dimensions of pro-social motive seen in different combination of inconsistent parenting styles, a final analysis was performed in which all possible combinations of inconsistent parenting style were included. There were six levels of this variable, indicated by the perceived maternal style followed by perceived paternal style. The results are presented in Table 5.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) in Table 5 depicts that there are statistically significant differences in the dimensions of prosocial motive of adolescents who perceived inconsistent parenting style. A post-hoc comparisons using Tukey HSD test suggested that differences were statistically significant among adolescents from homes where the combination of parenting style is authoritative and permissive compared to adolescents raised in either permissive­authoritarian or authoritarian- authoritative parents. Adolescents raised in families where either mothers are authoritative and fathers are permissive or vice versa, scored significantly higher on all dimensions of intrinsic pro-social motive than adolescents belong to any other family type. The reverse trend is evident in case of all extrinsic dimensions pro-social motive.

DISCUSSION

The present study reveals the nature of pro-social motive of adolescents. Findings suggest that intrinsic pro-social motive such as empathy, other’s-orientation and task orientation are mostly common among adolescents compared to extrinsic pro-social motive such as hedonism, conformity and self-orientation. This result is supported by the findings of Boehnke et al. (1989) which stated intrinsic (e.g., internalized or other-oriented, empathy) motives for prosocial behavior appear to be relatively high during adolescence. The possible explanation for this is that adolescents live up to the internalized principles of pro-social motive rather than simply displaying prosocial behaviour for gaining approval and compliance with external authority.

The study shows that adolescent girls are significantly higher on empathy and other’s-orientation dimension than boys. This finding is partially favoured by previous researches (Carlo & Rondall, 2002; Eisenberg, Carlo, Murphy, & Van Court, 1995) which stated that in early adolescence, girls sometimes expressed higher level of empathy and other’s-oriented mode of pro-social motive than boys. In countries like India, girls are encouraged to engage more in household activities to serve other members of the family, share their belongings with others and empathize them when necessary more often than boys. These may be a factor for girls for engaging in voluntary helping act motivated by concern for the need and welfare of others (i.e., altruism and empathy). Adolescent boys are found to be significantly higher on conformity compared to girls. This finding is in a similar direction of the results of Carlo, Roesch, and Koller (1999) which stated that adolescent boys are more concerned with gaining conformity while helping others and performing some heroic actions.

The second objective of this study was to analyze whether consistency or inconsistency in perceived parenting styles influence the pro-social motive of adolescents in the most pertinent settings of their life. Intriguingly, the overall consistency (irrespective of a particular parenting style) and inconsistency does not create any significant differences in different dimensions of pro-social motive. This may be due to the fact that the consistency category includes the combination of same parenting style which may include two authoritarian parents or two permissive parents or two authoritative parents. The consistency category which includes combination of two authoritarian parents may have negative impact on pro-social motive, while the inconsistency category which includes situations where one parent has authoritative style may act as a possible buffer in developing intrinsic pro-social motive among adolescents.

After fine-tuning the consistency and inconsistency category with respect to a particular dimension of parenting style, results confirmed that the level of intrinsic pro-social motives among adolescents is significantly higher when both parents are perceived as authoritative followed by permissive and authoritarian, though there was no significant effect of overall consistency and inconsistency in parenting style (irrespective of specific dimension) on different dimensions of pro-social motive. The possible reason for this is that gentle discipline, and mutually responsive relationship between parents and adolescents helps in developing early conscience internalisation (Fowles, Kochanska, 2000; Kochanska, 1991, 1995, 1997; Kochanska, Aksan, 1995; Kochanska, Aksan, Joy, 2007; Kochanska, Aksan, Knaack, Rhines, 2004; Kochanska, Coy, Murray, 2001; Kochanska, DeVet, Goldman, Murray, Putnam, 1994; Kochan- ska, Forman, Aksan, Dunbar, 2005; Ko- chanska, Gross, Mei-Hua, Nichols, 2002; Kochanska, Murray, 2000) and make them feel safe and secure in a variety of situations. This in turn permits them to independently act on their own personal beliefs and to be more concerned about the need of others without expecting any benefit in turn. This positive effect of authoritative parenting style on pro-social motive becomes more prominent when both parents are authoritative. On the other hand, authoritarian parents constrain their children’s independence and want their children to go after strict parental rules and commands without asking any questions and consequently this parenting style encourages conformity, approval seeking and pleasure seeking attitude among adolescents. Permissive parents are more responsive and demand very few thus, sometimes creating difficulties among adolescents in controlling their emotions and impulses which in turn make them little bit less concerned about others’ needs. The effect of permissive parenting style is less detrimental compared to authoritarian as early adolescents seek autonomy and prefer to have fewer restrictions on them. Though too much of freedom from parental control may confuse them as they are not enough mature to interpret the independence.

The results have also shown that inconsistency is not always bad. Authoritative- permissive dyad tends to yield significantly higher level of intrinsic pro-social motive compared to any other dyads. This may be due to the fact that authoritative-permissive dyad acts as a complementary to each other. That means one authoritative parent reinforces socially mature behaviour as well as individual needs of adolescents whereas other permissive parent provides freedom to support the need for independence among adolescents. Other dyads namely, authoritarian-authoritative and authoritarian-permissive were found to produce significantly higher levels of extrinsic prosocial motive. Authoritarian parenting style yields insecurity and compliance to authority by curbing the individual independence among adolescents. The detrimental effect of having one authoritarian parent is not being compensated by the effect of having one authoritative parenting style. Authoritarian-permissive styles are completely different to each other and thereby creating a lot of confusion and insecurity among adolescents. The study reveals that in case of inconsistent parenting style, it is preferable that at least one parent develops an authoritative style while the other displays permissiveness.

CONCLUSION

The present study determines the nature of pro-social motive among adolescents. The study also intends to throw some light on the effect of consistency or inconsistency in perceived parenting styles on pro-social motive of adolescents. The results indicate that adolescents generally show higher level of intrinsic pro-social motive. Adolescent girls prefer to display internalised and empathetic pro-social motives whereas adolescent boys tend to be more concerned in gaining others’ approval by displaying heroic activities. Intriguingly, the study reveals the effect of overall consistency in the parenting styles is not always beneficial over inconsistency. Consistency in parenting style facilitates intrinsic pro-social motive only when both parents are authoritative in nature. The result reveals that inconsistent parenting style is not always bad. Adolescents either having authoritative mother and permissive father or vice versa tend to be high on intrinsic pro-social motive compared to any other dyads. The study also confirms that it is not enough for one of the parents to exercise an authoritative style; in addition, the type of style exercised by the other parent makes a big difference.

In spite of some interesting findings on the impact of consistency and inconsistency in parenting style on pro-social motive of adolescents, there are several limitations of the present study. First limitation is that the study cannot draw causal inferences from the results as it is cross-sectional in nature. The second limitation is that responses are based on self-report. Future research should replicate these findings using parental reports as well as other methodologies (e.g., participant observations). The third limitation of this study lies in the location specificity. Further study based on samples selected from wider regional/cultural backgrounds such as traditional rural families or urban middle class families would be useful in providing insight into cultural variation in consistency and inconsistency in parenting and its impact on pro-social motive as a function of modernisation.

Despite these limitations, findings have a number of implications for socialisation and pro-social motive among adolescents. The present findings regarding consistency on authoritative parenting style provide support to the evidence that parents and instructors in academic sector need to provide conducive and supportive environment to adolescents in order to improve the quality of interpersonal relationship and enhance the empathetic motive among adolescents.