**3. Studies on parenting styles using Nigerian and Cameroon samples**

### **3.1. General method**

istic and communal in orientation [4, 3]. The Cameroon parents (represented by Nso people in this write up, and who live in the Anglophone sector of Cameroon) engage in relationshipsupporting parenting practices. These practices involve parental monitoring of children's health, teaching life skills to the children and stimulating their growth and development [3, pp. 138]. Good parenting to this group of Cameroonians consists of parents taking the lead with monitoring, instructing, training, directing and controlling infants' activities [3]. These parenting practices reflect a collectivistic society with an authoritarian parenting strategy.

On the other hand in a study carried out on cultural differences in parenting and infant's socialization, in which two traditional farming community families ((Cameroon Nso families), & (India Gujarati Rajputs families)) and one western middle-class families (German families), were compared, it was found that parenting strategies in the two community families pro‐ moted communion [18]. Further, it was found that the Cameroonian and Indian infants were exposed to multiple caregivers and social cohesiveness within extended family networks. This finding further affirms the collectivistic and communal nature of the Cameroonian society. However, the results of the study also indicated that the socialisation strategy, used by Cameroon parents with their infants, was more indulgent (permissive) than that of the Indian parents. This second finding tends to portray the Cameroon parents as permissive and not authoritarian. It is however possible that these two parenting styles are actually being practiced

Deductions made from a study on family structure and juvenile delinquency [17], provided some insight into this possibility. According to these deductions, the traditional Cameroonian culture acknowledges and sanctions the authority of the father over his family but fails to specify a routine childcare role for him. The father therefore represents only an authority figure in the family but distant from his children, with a rigid attitude and emotional-non involve‐ ment posture. This father role omission created a gap between the high and lofty status and high esteem accorded the fathers in the culture and their appropriate and qualitative inputs needed for their children's adequate development. In turn this gap was maintained by the societal attitude towards fathers who tend to be tender and nurturing towards their infants and young children, in that such fathers are either seen as effeminate or behaving inappropri‐ ately [19]. This societal position created confusion for the contemporary Cameroonian parents who struggle with the conflict between traditional and modern directives regarding parenting [17]. It was also asserted that the values of Cameroonian parents create the conditions that permit children to spend more time within the peer culture and less in the parent-child dyads [17]. As such most toddlers in Cameroon learn more from each other than from their parents or other adults, and the responsibility for the development of toddlers therefore falls less on parents and more on the children themselves or other children within the peer culture, [17, 20,

From this indirect parental influence on the socialization of Cameroon children, it was inferred that Cameroonian parents especially fathers seemed to have evolved from being authoritarian and emotionally distant from their children to being permissive but still emotionally distant, (a situation in which control is now given over to children, with very few rules if any exist at all and these rules are inconsistently enforced, and where pa‐

by Cameroonian parents.

82 Parenting in South American and African Contexts

21-22].

The design used for the studies reported here was cross sectional. The participants were assessed only once but at different times and different periods and from different locations and different schools. The sampling method used was convenience sampling based on availability of the participants.

#### **3.2. Parenting style scale used**

The parenting style scale used for the studies being reported here is a 20 - item parenting style scale adapted from the parenting care scale, originally developed by Baumrind, (1971)[10]. The Baumrind's parenting care scale that was available to the researcher and which was adapted consists of 20- items. Seven of the items (7) measures authoritarian parenting style, another seven (7) measures permissive parenting style, and the remaining six (6) measures authorita‐ tive parenting style. Response to Baumrind's parenting care scale items is a "Yes" or a "No". An internal consistency alpha coefficient of.86 was reported for this scale.

The adapted parenting style scale used for the studies reported here also consists of 20- items, but which contains items from Baumrind's version and items from Rohner's (1990) acceptance - rejection questionnaire [23]. In this scale, 5 of the items measures permissive parenting style, 6 items measures authoritarian parenting style while 9 items measures authoritative parenting style. In addition participants' responses to the scale items in the adapted version varied according to the five point Likert Scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree on a scale of 1 to 5. This differs from the responses to the scale items in Baumrind's version which is a "yes" or "no" response.

**4.2. Yoruba tribal group**

**4.3. Efik tribal group**

**4.4. Procedure**

research.

Results:

Behaviourally, the Yoruba tribal group demands respect for and obedience to authority figures and elders and they tend to believe that children are to be seen and not heard and to do as they are told. At the same time they demonstrate parental responsiveness and warmth by using behavioural and monitoring controls over their children by monitoring where they are, what they are doing and with whom they are because they are more family oriented and they value family integrity and dignity. Although they do not allow parent-child dialogue, they explain and give reasons for their disciplinary measures and actions. In this respect their children may perceive their parenting style as either authoritarian, or authoritative, or a mixture of both.

Cultural Variations in Parenting Styles in the Majority World Evidences from Nigeria and Cameroon

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/57003

85

Behaviourally, the Efik tribal group are not as demanding of respect and obedience to authority figures as the Yoruba tribal group. This is because they tend to be more community oriented by organising themselves into community associations and ensuring regular and frequent meetings for cohesion and bonding, and they punish defaulters. The enforcement of com‐ munity or tribal bonding and involvement may be perceived as authoritarian approach by members of the tribal group. It is therefore expected that young people of Efik decent would perceive the parenting style under which they were brought up as more authoritarian.

All the participants were secondary school students in their respective schools. As requested by their teachers, they completed a written questionnaire. The questionnaire contains three sections. The first section is a biographical information form. One of the remaining two sections contains measures of parenting style. Below are results of the parenting style section of the

**Parenting Styles Sample/Parenting style X2**

Authoritarian 72 8.1 2.42\* Authoritative 381 45.3 8.35\*

Authoritarian & Authoritative 248 29.8 5.41\*

Undifferentiated 81 9.0 2.51\*

Permissive 15 1.6

Permissive & Authoritarian 11 1.4 Permissive & Authoritative 13 1.4

Permissive/ Authoritarian/ Authoritative 31 3.5

Total 852 100

\* Note: Critical X2 = 1.645, P<.05 Extracted from [14]

**Table 1.** Distribution of Parenting styles and their hybrids

**No %**

Examples of the items in the adapted scale include "My parents respects my privacy", "My parents really expects me to follow family rules", "My parents give me a lot of freedom". For the permissive parenting style, the number of items is five. If a respondent is uncertain for all the items his score would be 15. Therefore any score that is higher than 15 is taken as a permissive score. Consequently for authoritarian parenting style (6 items), any score that is higher than 18 is taken as an authoritarian score, and for authoritative parenting style (9 items) any score that is higher than 27 is taken as an authoritative score. For this adapted scale, the following correlation coefficients for a 5-week interval test retest reliability analysis were obtained: Permissive r = 0.67, authoritarian r = 0.35, Authoritative r = 0.80[24].

It is important to note here that the low test retest reliability coefficient for authoritarian parenting items may be explained on the following premise. Since Nigerian children's perception of their parents' parenting styles progresses and shifts towards authoritative parenting as they grow up, a shift in this direction might have occurred between the first test and the retest of the participants to the effect that it lowered the reliability of the authoritarian parenting items and increase the reliability of the authoritative parenting items at the retest point. This shift in perception is more likely because the reliability data was collected on Yoruba participants who tend to perceive their parents as more authoritative than authoritarian as they grow older. The implication then is that the reliability coefficient for authoritarian items may still be lower if samples that are older than the present sample is tested.
