The Effect of Parenting Styles of Mothers on Delay of Gratification, and its Relationship with the Cognitive Abilities in Preschool Children

Abstract

The present study attempted to study the impact of parenting styles on delay of gratification and cognitive abilities, and also the relationship between delay of gratification and cognitive abilities of a child. The sample comprised of 33 male preschoolers of age range 3-4years old and also their respective mothers of the age 25-30years old. The mothers were asked to respond to a self-assessment parenting questionnaire, while the children participated in experiments assessing delay of gratification and cognitive abilities. For the result analysis, descriptive statistics to describe the results; correlation and regression were used. The results obtained in the study were not very significant and there are many reasons attributing to it; but the major reason researcher could find was the small sample size (N=33). However, an inclination towards significance could be seen in the impact of authoritarian and permissive parenting styles on delay of gratification. As hypothesised, the findings were not that evident but a pattern could be observed that these parenting styles have a negative effect on delay of gratification in children; inconclusive results were found for authoritative parenting style. Secondly, it was hypothesised that there is no impact of parenting styles on child’s cognitive abilities; the hypotheses were accepted for authoritarian and permissive styles but there was a deviation in the case of authoritative style where they seem to have a positive relationship. The present research also studies the relationship between gratification delay and cognitive abilities in children. It was proposed that toddlers with higher gratification skills have higher cognitive abilities. The hypothesis was accepted as a positive relationship was observed in the study. Further implications, limitations and future research direction have been discussed in the study.