How parents raise their children will be seen later on in life. Parental treatment of their kids will affect them in many ways. Harsh parenting could lead to low school grades as it would affect them in school.
How parents treat their kids leave an impression even later on. The choices kids make are often the result of how they were raised. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have made a study on how parents affect their kids both directly and indirectly.
Rochelle F. Hentges, lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology has said that harsh parenting will lead to further consequences later in life. This can be from lower educational attainment to what companions people will choose later on. The study identified harsh parenting to include hitting, yelling or threatening children.
The study looked at youth who have participated in the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study. The Maryland study was made in a period of nine years involving 1,482 students. The study followed the students from seventh grace all the way until three years after the students graduated from high school.
The study has found that kids who had harsh treatment at home in the seventh grade regard their peers to be more important in the ninth grade. This would lead to even more difficult behavior in the eleventh grade. Males were more prone to delinquency while females had more sexual behaviors, according to Science Daily.
The youth who had harsh parental experiences were also more likely to drop out of school. The outcome of harsh parenting is regardless of socioeconomic factors and educational values. Hentges has observed that such youth who haven't made an attachment to their parents would more likely seek out their peers for validation, as Eureka Alert reports.
The study hopes that the findings can have an impact in intervention and prevention programs aimed at youth. Ming-Te Wang, who co-authored the study and a professor of Psychology in Education, has said that programs could be made that deals with unhealthy peer relations and delinquency. A more balanced guidance from parents is needed to make children do better in school. Harsh parenting could lead to low school grades. Depressed people could also let go of unattainable goals better.
