Parenting styles, adolescent behaviour and social adjustment in northern Cross River state

After a careful observation of social adjustment of adolescents in northern educational zone of cross river state, Nigeria, social adjustment was formed by a lack of communication and parenting styles that include unclear expectations of behaviour, inconsistent or harsh discipline, conflict between parents and caregivers and low expectation of the child's success. Base on this I was motivated to find out whether parenting styles has any influence on adolescents social adjustment. A null hypothesis was formulated to guide the study. Literature review was carried out accordingly. Ex-post factor research was adopted for the study. A sample of 627 respondents were selected for the study. The selection was done through the stratified and simple random sampling techniques. Questionnaire was the main instrument for data collection. A one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was adopted to test the hypothesis under study, at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the analysis revealed that parenting styles significantly influence adolescents social adjustment. Based on the results and finding of the study, it was recommended that parents should learn to accept, guide and be concern over their adolescents needs to avoid academic, health and antisocial problems of adjustment.