The intergenerational transmission of parenting styles of Irish immigrant mothers

Abstract

The research on child developmental outcomes underscores the importance of exploring parenting styles and identifying their multifactorial and intergenerational influences. This descriptive study examined the individual parenting styles of a sample of 82 Irish immigrant mothers and investigated the factors that influenced their individual parenting style. The findings suggest that the permissive and authoritative parenting style scores of this sample of Irish immigrant mothers are related to their perception of their mothers' parenting style scores. The relationship between the Irish immigrants mothers' authoritarian parenting style scores and their mothers' authoritarian parenting style scores approached significance at.063. These findings suggest that, when asked to compare their parenting styles to their mothers, the Irish immigrant participants reported a stronger authoritative parenting style, a stronger permissive parenting style, and a weaker authoritarian parenting style. In a standard multiple regression the most significant variables that emerged as influential on current parenting styles were the grandmothers' parenting style score, perception of social support, and working outside of the home. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.