The Relationship of Parenting Styles to Social Phobia among Early Adolescent Students

This study aimed at investigating the relationship of parenting styles with social phobia among a sample of 1028 early adolescent students. To achieve the objective of the study, short forms of the parenting styles scale and a social phobia scale were used.Results showed that the participants' highest scores were on the father's authoritative and mother's authoritative parenting styles. In addition, there were significant interactions between gender and grade level on all parenting styles. The results also showed statistically significant differences in social phobia due to gender, grade level and the interaction between them, for gender was females scored higher than males. With regard to grade level seventh graders scored higher than eighth graders.The results indicated that there were significant relationships between parenting styles and social phobia, with the exception of the relationship between mother's authoritative parenting style and social phobia. Regarding the parenting styles predicting social phobia by gender, it was found that for males and females, the predictive parenting styles were: Mother's permissive parenting style and father's authoritarian parenting style. Regarding the parenting styles predicting social phobia by grade level, it was found that for seventh grade, the predictive styles were: Mother's permissive parenting style, father's permissive parenting style and father's authoritative parenting style, respectively. For eighth grade, the predictive styles were: Father's permissive parenting style, mother's permissive parenting style and father's authoritarian parenting style.