Abstract

Parenting styles have most often been studied through the lens of adolescent academic outcomes but less is known about how mothers' and fathers' parenting styles influence academic performance separately, especially during the critical transitionary period to post-secondary education. This study examines how mothers' and fathers' parenting styles distinctly shape emerging adults' first-term academic outcomes during their postsecondary education, with a focus on the dimensions of parental warmth and control. The study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 dataset and the NLSY97 Post-Secondary Transcript Data focusing on the 1997-2005 cohorts (N=3,478) along with OLS regression analyses to predict emerging adults' postsecondary schools first-term GPA by mothers' and fathers' distinct parenting styles. My findings show that students with Authoritative fathers performed better than those with Uninvolved fathers, while students with Permissive mothers performed marginally but statistically significantly better than those with Authoritative mothers. This challenges past assumptions about the most beneficial parenting styles, especially when maternal and paternal differences are accounted for. This study emphasizes the need to re-examine how different parenting styles may be more useful after adolescence and how warmth in particular may be more important to prioritize over control in order to facilitate students' success, especially among mothers.

Degree

MS

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Sociology

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2025-12-18

Document Type

Thesis

Keywords

mothers' parenting style, fathers' parenting style, emerging adulthood, postsecondary education

Language

english

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