How Students Estimate Family Relationships and Competent Parenting

The subject of the paper is the correlation between family relationships and competent parenting, perceived from a systemic perspective. The aim of the research was to determine which family relationships are perceived as the most functional by the students, when the parents are presented with a permissive, authoritative, authoritarian, inconsistent, or indifferent educational style. We assumed that students assess, most positively, the family relationships where the parents are permissive. Our expectations, that the permissive style will be estimated as an indicator of the most functional relationships in one family, were based on the results of the research conducted by McGillicuddy-De Lisi, De Lisi (2007), and on the characteristics of the adolescent phase which our respondents are a part of. We used the following research instruments: Index of Family Relations (IFR, Hudson 1982) and five vignettes in which the educational style of parents was described (authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, inconsistent and indifferent). The examinees were 316 male and 268 female students. The results showed that the participants estimated most positively, the story about a family in which both parents apply the authoritative educational style, and then a situation in which the father applies the permissive and inconsistent educational style, whereas, when the mother is in question, inconsistency comes before permissiveness. When both parents apply authoritarian and indifferent educational style, family relationships are estimated as significantly negative, especially in the case where the indifferent education style is applied by both parents. This finding is not in accordance with our expectations, but it agrees with the Circumplex model of family relationships and the expectations that the authoritative educational style relies on functional family relationships, in other words that the functionality of family relationships affects competent parenting. Students’ perceptions of family relationships and competent parenting are very important for their adequate parenting in the future.