Parenting Styles and Parents’ Attitudes towards Children’s Gender Nonconformity: Moderating Role of Parents’ Education

Abstract

Parents are concerned about how gender identity may affect their child's views and behaviors, given the surge in the number of children and young adults who are willing to defy normal gender expression these days. However, due to the subject's sensitivity, few studies on this topic have been conducted in Malaysia. As a result, the focus of this study was on parenting practices and parents' attitudes toward a child's gender nonconformity, with parental educational levels serving as a moderating factor. This study sought to educate and inform parents by providing them with a greater understanding of the techniques they choose as their parenting styles and attitudes, as well as how those styles and attitudes affect how they know, reflect on, and interpret their children's gender behaviors. This study included 300 parents from Klang Valley, Malaysia. As instruments, the Attitude Toward Woman Scale (AWS), Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ), and Gender Identity Questionnaire (GIQC) were used. According to the findings of this study, attitude plays a substantial role on children's gender nonconformity. Furthermore, the study's findings demonstrated that parental education considerably moderates the relation between parents' attitudes and authoritative parenting style and children's gender nonconformity. Finally, higher degrees of education minimize gender nonconformity in children with the same level of parental attitude. Higher levels of education, on the other hand, increase children's non-conformity among children with the same amount of authoritative parenting style. In other words, higher levels of education increase the negative influence of parents' authoritative parenting style on non-conformity behavior in children.