The view of secondary school adolescents on the psychosocial interactions with their parents infancy in Nairobi province, Kenya

Abstract

Introduction: Trauma occurring during infancy and childhood development remains unforgotten and unforgiven It lives on as a scar that inhibits health attitudes towards others, which affects interpersonal relationships. These psychosocial experiences of a person in his or her early life with the primary caregiver remains the origin of his/her learned behaviour, motives, desires and perceptions. which affect the person's psycho dvnamic, cognitive development and behaviour throughout life With increasing rates of school interruptions brought around by student unrest's; the study is designed to determine the magnitude of parenting styles and types/forms of child abuse occurring in homes. Objective: To identify the parenting styles and classify the types/forms of child abuse that occurred during childhood development among adolescents in secondary schools of Nairobi Province, Kenya. Hypothesis: There exists no relationship between the parenting styles and forms of child abuse in the study population. Design: Across-sectional descriptive study. Subjects: Male and female students aged between 13-19 years in secondary schools of Nairobi Province were recruited in the study. Setting: After obtaining consent form the Ministry of Education, school principals, and parents of the respondents, multistage sampling was done. The participants were included in the study only if they were willing to participate and were registered students in the sampled schools. A.I."1:oerbtaining their ascent time was given for the participants to fill out the EMBU questionnaires Main Outcome Measures Factor analysis was done by classifying large number of variables from the EMBU questionnaire into subgroups that measured the parenting styles and forms of child abuse. To achieve the two objectives. data was further analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics of the SPSS. The hypothesis was tested by correlating the different parenting styles and forms of child abuse Results: Two hundred and fifty five (255) students (145 males and 110 females) were recruited for the study. Four parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and uninvolved) and four forms of child abuse (physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse and emotional neglect) were classified. The fathers, 69.4% of them, psychologically interacted with their children in an authoritarian parenting rearing behaviour, 235% were uninvolved in their children upbringing. The matemal rearing behaviour showed different patterns, 3375% were permissive, 23.9% uninvolved and 40% authoritarian towards their children. Very few parents were authoritative, 4. 75%of fathers and 2.4% of the mothers reared the children in this style of parenting. Mothers were slightly more permissive (35.5% boy study population) with the sons as compared to the daughters (31.8% girl study population); they were more authoritative (3.4% boy study population) with their sons as compared (0.9% girl study population) to their daughters. From the results, 65.5%of the boy population and 79.1 % of the girl population in the study were emotionally neglected by their fathers. Mothers were perceived as having abused the children in the three forms of abuse (physical neglect-82.8% of the boys and 84.5% of the girls, emotional abuse- 56.6% of the boys and 536%ofthe girls, and physical abuse- 82.8% of the boys and 81.8% of the girls), but scored low on emotional neglect (l93o/00fthe boys and 20.9% of the girls) as compared to the fathers There was association between authoritative parenting and two forms of child abuse among the father; emotional child abuse p<O.OOl and physical child abuse p=O.004 Among the mothers the significant finding, p=0.004 was scored with physical child abuse.

Authoritarian parenting had high significant scores between the parenting style and three forms of child abuse: fathers, physical child abuse p=O.006, emotional child abuse p=0.001, and for mothers; physical child abuse p<0.001, emotional child abuse p<0.001 and emotioru child neglect p<0.001 The fathers showed no association between this parenting style and two forms of child neglect (emotional or physical), but for mothers there was no association with physical child neglect Uninvolved parenting, the child's emotions are neglected by both parents, fathers p=0.02 and mothers p<0.001, but there is no association between this parenting style and the other three forms of abuse. Discussion: four different parenting styles were perceived by children as the reanng behaviour by their parents/guardians in their upbringing. Majority of the respondents were of the view that their parents/guardian used authoritarian rearing behaviour, 69.4% of the fathers and 40% of the mothers, 23.5% of the fathers and 23.9% of the mothers were uninvolved in their children rearing. On gender, 703% of the fathers reared their boys in authoritarian style, while 66.4% of them, reared the girls in this style. More mothers were permissive in their rearing behaviour (33.7%) unlike the fathers (2.4%) A few parents/guardian applied the authoritative parenting style, 4.7% of the fathers and 2.4% of the mothers in the study population. Mothers' were slightly more permissive towards their sons (35.5%) as compared to their daughters (31.8%). The mothers who used authoritative parenting style applied it more to their sons (3.4%) as compared to the girls (09%). 23.5% of the fathers and a similar percentage of the mothers, 23.9% were uninvolved in their children upbringing This gives same reflection on gender rearing behaviour, 20 7% of the boys viewed their fathers to be uninvolved and 27% of the girls, and 20.7% boys viewed their mothers to have been uninvolved and 28.2% of the girls. Four forms of child abuse; physical child abuse; physical child neglect, emotional (psychological) child abuse and emotional (psychological) child neglect are described by the study Male parents/guardians emotionally neglected their children: (655%) boys and 791 %) but they were perceived to be less on physical neglect and physical abuse. More boys (22.8%) were emotionally abused than girls (11.8%) by their fathers. Mothers were perceived to have abused/neglected their children in all four forms of abuse. There is no gender difference by the mothers on abusing the children, they were perceived to physically abuse and physically neglect their children (828%) and 82.8 boys and 81.1% and 84.5% girls) than they emotionally neglected the children (19.3% boys and 209% girls) 56.6% of the boys viewed that they were emotionally abused by their mother compared to almost similar (53.6%) of the girls in the study. Conclusion: the results of this study revealed that there were relations between the parenting styles and types of child abuse. (Also there were differences amongst the parents in their styles of parenting and types of child abuse). Fathers were more authoritarian in their rearing behaviour and emotionally neglected the children. Mothers were less likely to show extremes in any parenting style, but physically and emotionally abused their children, also physically neglected them. Mothers scored low on emotional neglect of the children than the fathers. Though parents are unconsciously aware of these impacts of their interactions with the children at home, it would be suggested that lessons on parenting be popularised for young parents.