Appraisal of Parental Attributes of Young Parents of Rural Uttarakhand

Family is the fundamental unit of the society and has the most important influence in a child’s life. Parents and family form a child’s first relationships. Numerous researches have indicated that effective parenting is important to have a secure attachment that leads to a healthy social, emotional, cognitive development of children. Parenting is heavily influenced by culture, community and individual attitudes and traits. The present study is based on a research project on “Parenting and Reproductive health care in agrarian families” conducted by the research team of Child Development Unit of All India Coordinated Research Project, Pantnagar. The study seeks to assess parental factors like temperament, competency and styles of parenting of rural parents of Uttarakhand. The study comprised of a sample of 300 couples making a total of 600 respondents. Self-Structured Interview Schedules were used to collect data. The results revealed that majority of parents reported to have average temperament and competency. The results on parenting style reported authoritarian style as the most preferred parenting style followed by authoritative style. Permissive parenting was the least adopted style of parenting among parents.