Parenting Styles, Age and Ordinal Position as Correlates of Anxiety

This study was embarked on to identify the dominant parenting styles experienced by undergraduates in the universities in Edo State of Nigeria and to find out if parenting styles influence anxiety, self-esteem and achievement motivation. The influence of age, school type, vocational orientation, family size, ordinal position and gender on anxiety, self-esteem and achievement motivation were also investigated. Literature revealed that the present upsurge of insurgency in Nigeria can be traced to parenting. The population of the study comprised undergraduates in the University of Benin and Ambrose Ali University, Ekpoma. A sample of three thousand seven hundred (3,700) students was drawn from both universities. Two instruments: the Parenting Style Survey Scale (PSSS) and the Personality Attributes Scale (PAS) were used for the study. The Data were analyzed using the Z-test for proportions, the One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), the Multivariate Analysis of Variance and multiple regression. All hypotheses were tested at =0.05.The result showed that: Democratic parenting was the dominant parenting style among Nigerian families, though all the families used a blend of the three.