ABSTRACT

As more parents achieve a higher education level and are exposed to better parenting behaviors and styles, the changing roles of housekeepers and managing child's education are expected. Millennial parents are reported to hold a stable career, higher economic status, better access to information, and practices of successful parenting. Nonetheless, there are substantive reports of millennial parents still practicing traditional parenting, who had witnessed and experienced its effective practices with older generations. Hence, the current study examined the possible differences between maternal and paternal parenting styles. In addition, a prediction of parental education level and parenting styles on children’s reading skills were also investigated. With a total of 109 parent-child dyads, the study was conducted in one of the urban settings in Malaysia. The instruments used in the present study were adapted and adopted from Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, and Hart (2001) for parenting practices, while the reading test was derived from Lee et al. (2020). Descriptive statistics were utilized to describe on parents’ demographic analysis and educational background, while inferential statistics, such as multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to answer RQ2 and RQ3. The results of the study reveal a slightdifference between maternal-paternal parenting styles, in which mothers portray more authoritative styles than fathers. Interestingly, only maternal education level predicts children’s reading skills and parenting styles of both do not predict children’s reading skills. Finally, it can be concluded that an Asian-parenting culture could potentially influence child-rearing styles among the urban parents in this setting.

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