**9. Conclusion**

The importance of studying parenting practices is (i) to determine the nature, and variety of practices that parents adopt while bringing up their children, and (ii) to examine the effectiveness and benefits of such practices. From the reviewed literature, " see [18, 7], and the studies reported here, it can be deduced that parental practices vary from one culture to another culture and such practices reflect the cultural values of the society. Nigeria is a collectivistic and patriarchal society with values such as obedience to authority figures, compliance with parental instructions, cooperation and helpfulness within and outside the extended family systems, communal living and good interpersonal relationship. Accord‐ ing to the studies reported here, the Nigerian parents practice dominantly authoritative parenting style and the hybrid authoritarian/authoritative parenting style. Cameroon is also a collectivistic and patrilineal society that values communal living, extended family system and observational learning, learning through play and interaction with peers, and from the findings reported here, the Cameroonian parents dominantly practice permissive parent‐ ing style and the permissive/authoritarian parenting style hybrid. Although Nigeria and Cameroon are collectivistic societies, they still practice different parenting styles and the parenting styles being practiced by these two collectivistic Countries must have been effective in achieving their parenting goals. It has been found in a study that young people

(Nigerians), brought up under authoritative parenting, authoritarian parenting, and the authoritative/authoritarian parenting hybrid were not significantly different in their levels of sense of competence, need for achievement, locus of control, and academic achieve‐ ment. However participants brought up under authoritative parenting style reported the highest level of self esteem when compared to other parenting styles, [13]. These results indicate that the three parenting strategies are equally effective for Nigerian parents. In the same way it was found that the Nigerian and Cameroonian participants were not statistical‐ ly different in their restraint, liberal and permissive attitudes towards sexuality issues, and interestingly the Cameroonian participants reported significantly higher judgemental attitude and attitude toward parental responsibility with respect to sexuality issues, [27]. This finding implies that the parental strategies being practiced by Cameroonian parents are effective in achieving their parenting goals. A broader implication of these findings is that parenting styles adopted by a group is a function of the values upheld by the group and the goals of parenting of that group. Besides, a number of studies have demonstrat‐ ed that different parental strategies work for different groups in different cultural con‐ texts. For example some studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of authoritative parenting both in individualistic and collectivistic cultures, see [28, 29, 13], while some other studies have also demonstrated the beneficial effects of authoritarian parenting especially in collectivistic cultures, see [7, 30, 31, 13]. Even the permissive parenting style which is associated with negative outcomes, [32], just like authoritarian parenting style, [11], has also been found to be effective in bringing positive child outcomes for Cameroonian parents, [27]. The general conclusion that can be drawn from all these studies is that parenting style as a global construct reflects the quality of parent-child relationships which varies from one cultural context to another and which is driven by the cultural beliefs, values, and practices of the particular culture. As suggested, see [8], when parenting behaviour is consistent with cultural values then the children in that culture will accept it. It therefore follows that in the countries or societies in which authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting styles bring about positive child outcomes, parental behaviours must have been consis‐ tent with the cultural values of such countries. In addition whether a particular parenting style produces positive or negative child outcomes would depend on the culture within which it is practiced.

Finally it would be interesting if future researchers can explore the possibility of the existence of hybrids of the three single parenting styles in other cultures beside Nigeria and Cameroon which has been documented.
