ACADEMIA Letters The Joint Impact of Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles on Children’s High-School Academic Achievement in Taiwan Ping-Yin Kuan Chih-Tsan Wang A substantial body of research indicates that childrens academic achievements and learning attitudes were better when parents participate in their childrens education [1, 2, 3]. In general, past research has tended to explore the impact of parenting or educational involvement of only one parent, primarily mothers [4, 5, 6]. Changes in family structure since the 1970s, such as rising divorce rate, non-marital births, and a steady increase in the proportion of married women engaged in wage-earning labor in the U.S., and the western world in general, have prompted researchers to study fatherhood, besides motherhood [7, 8, 9, 10]. Along with the emerging interest in fatherhood in the 1990s, there was also a growing interest in the joint impacts of motherhood and fatherhood on childrens developmental outcomes in diverse family settings (e.g., [11, 12, 13]). While joint parenting has been the norm across human societies and two-parent families, albeit becoming less common, still constituted a majority of families worldwide [14]. Only relatively recently, empirical research of this nature has started to take root. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the joint impacts of maternal and paternal parenting in the context of Taiwan, a society influenced by both traditional Chinese and modern western cultures. Like other industrialized societies, rapid industrialization in Taiwan has significantly impacted its family structure over the last few decades. For instance, the crude birth rate had dropped from 23.38 ‰ in 1980 to 8.29 ‰ in 2009. The divorce rate had increased from 0.76 ‰ to 2.48 ‰ in the same period [15]. However, Taiwans family situation continued to have unique features not shared with the West. Despite the significant social transformation, the Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Ping-Yin Kuan, soci1005@nccu.edu.tw Citation: Kuan, P., Wang, C. (2021). The Joint Impact of Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles on Children’s High-School Academic Achievement in Taiwan. Academia Letters, Article 283. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL283. 1 family continues to be the most important institution in Taiwan. According to a government report in 2001, nearly 90% of children aged 12 to 14 in Taiwan lived with both parents. For ages 15 to 24, the figure was about 68% [16]. Moreover, traditional parental roles underlying notions such as “men take care of things outside of the family, while women take care of things inside the family” were still the norm in Taiwan [17]. In other words, by all accounts, the mother was still the one responsible for taking childrens care in Taiwan [18]. Consequently, just like earlier studies of parenting in the West, scholarly research in Taiwan has tended to neglect a fathers role in parenting and studies of joint parenting of moth ers and fathers were even less. Studies of parenting styles in the West have consistently shown that authoritative parenting, characterized by parents combining warmth and support with the enforcement of clear standards and rules for their childrens conduct, was optimal for children s outcomes [19, 20]. Whether or not this kind of parenting was also optimal for children in societies that were not individualist oriented has generated considerable debates (see [21, 22] for reviews). For instance, Chao [23, 24] has suggested that authoritative parentings beneficial effects might not be relevant to families of Chinese descent. She proposed that the Chinese style of parenting emphasized the importance of training (guan). “Guan” means a type of parental control that instills the need to work hard, be self-disciplined, and do well in school. It also involved a sort of parental responsiveness that includes investment, involvement, and support of children, rather than just the emotional demonstrativeness [24]. This kind of Chinese parenting was similar to the authoritarian parenting style, characterized by parents low level of responsiveness and highly restrictive control level. However, it would not be negatively interpreted by children of Chinese descendants and would not negatively affect childrens perception of a close relationship with their parents and their school performance. Furthermore, the same familys father and mother m ay or may not have the same parenting style. Suppose both father and mother of the same family used authoritative parenting. Would it be most beneficial to their childrens developmental outcomes than the family with only one parent using this parenting type? Or, if parents in the same family differ in their parenting styles, would authoritative parenting used by one of the parents would buffer the possible adverse effect of another parent using another type of parenting that is less demanding or less supportive [12]? Even fewer studies have investigated the effects of various combinations of parenting styles on children s outcomes in non-Western societies. However, a few studies found seemed to be consistent with the findings of the West. For instance, Sim and Chin [25], based on the selfreported data of 284 Singaporean adolescents, found that adolescents with two authoritative parents had a greater interest in schooling and achievement goals than those with two authorAcademia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Ping-Yin Kuan, soci1005@nccu.edu.tw Citation: Kuan, P., Wang, C. (2021). The Joint Impact of Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles on Children’s High-School Academic Achievement in Taiwan. Academia Letters, Article 283. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL283. 2 itarian parents. Furthermore, they found that fathers parenting style has unique contribution to outcomes examined beyond mothers parenting. Talib, Mohamad, and Mamat [26], using a sample of 200 dual-earner families, also found positive impacts of two authoritative parents on adolescent children s behavior and school achievement in the context of Malaysian Society. In short, different cultures may influence the relationship between parenting styles and childrens outcomes. The present study intended to address this issue in the context of Taiwan. We used data gathered by Taiwan Education Panel Survey (TEPS) in 2001 and 2003 to explore how fathers and mothers parenting styles jointly influenced their children s academic achievement in junior high. The final analytical sample size of this study is 14,822. To discover different parenting styles in Taiwan, we considered 18 questionnaire items related to parenting practices surveyed by TEPS in 2003. In 2003, students were asked to indicate which of their parents or other family members carried out various parenting practices since they became junior high students. Students had six multiple options to choose from: no one, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and other family members. Using latent class analysis (LCA), the study uncovered four parenting styles for Taiwanese fathers and mothers. These four parenting styles were consistent with parenting typology often discussed in the literature and labeled as authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful. In many ways, authoritarian parenting was similar to authoritative parenting, particularly on the mothers side, in Taiwan. Significant differences between these two parenting styles were whether parents are willing to listen to childrens thoughts and spend time with their children when they have serious problems or difficulties. Compared to authoritative fathers, authoritarian fathers also seemed less strict in controlling childrens behaviors and less involved emotionally with children. As to permissive parenting, the important feature of the type, compared to authoritative or authoritarian parenting, was somewhat limited behavioral control. However, permissive parenting in Taiwan still cared about giving some behavior guidelines to their children, especially on the mothers side. Besides being willing to listen to and spend time with their children, both permissive fathers and mothers would make explicit demands for daily schedule. Permissive mothers would also make explicit requirements for how to behave, what to wear, dietary or health habits, and always be worried about their children. Permissive fathers were also more likely to grant their childrens wishes or requests. In some ways, permissive parenting in the Taiwanese context might be more like authoritative parenting of the West since this was the type that would grant more autonomy to their children and be supportive at the same time. No difference between Taiwan and the West as far as neglectful parenting goes. Neglectful fathers or mothers were perceived to be not involved with their children either in monitoring or supporting their children. Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Ping-Yin Kuan, soci1005@nccu.edu.tw Citation: Kuan, P., Wang, C. (2021). The Joint Impact of Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles on Children’s High-School Academic Achievement in Taiwan. Academia Letters, Article 283. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL283. 3 What were the combined patterns of fathers and mothers parenting styles in two - parent families in Taiwan? The most prevalent pattern was two permissive parents (13.8%), followed by two authoritative parents (11.4%) in the same family. This finding supports Simons and Conger [12] that we would find these two patterns prevalent due to assortative mating and mutual influence. However, contrary to their prediction [14], the combination of two neglectful parents (7.4%) was not among the top three patterns in Taiwan. Instead, two authoritarian parents (9.5%), the pattern considered by Simons and Conger [12] to be the exception to similar parenting styles, was the third most prevalent in Taiwan. However, the combination of one authoritarian father and one permissive mother, a type of family parenting similar to the traditional expectation of “a strict father and a nurturing mother,” was the fourth most common pattern found in Taiwan. The percentage of this type, 7.7%, is slightly higher than two neglectful parents. In short, the finding of the combined patterns of paternal and maternal parenting styles in Taiwan seemed to be more strongly influenced by assortative mating or mutual influence and traditional gender ideology than the case of American society. TEPS also administered an ability test in the classroom under standardized conditions in each wave. We used IRT scores derived from the ability test in 2001 (7th grade) and 2003 (9th grade) as the outcome variables, childrens academic achievement. Several background variables, including gender, family socioeconomic status, ethnicity, number of siblings, attending private school, degree of urbanization, were included as covariates in the latent class analysis of parenting styles and also included as control variables in the analysis of the joint impacts of paternal and maternal parenting styles on junior high students academic achievement. Family socioeconomic status was also a latent variable with both parents education levels, skill levels of occupations, and monthly family income as indicators. We utilized the structural equation modeling to analyze paternal and maternal parenting styles joint impacts on junior high students Academic Achievement The SEM analysis showed that when one of the parents was permissive, the children performed the best. This finding was contrary to what is often found in the West that the optimal parenting style for children s achievement is authoritative parenting. The research further found that if paternal parenting was authoritative and maternal parenting was neglectful, this type of joint parenting style would have the most negative impact on their children s academic achievement. The findings alert us to place the substantive meaning of perceived parenting styles in the social and cultural context. It seemed that Taiwanese adolescents would perceive their parents control as strict only when their lives are highly regulated. The emphasis on respect for parental authority might socialize children in societies influenced by Chinese culture Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Ping-Yin Kuan, soci1005@nccu.edu.tw Citation: Kuan, P., Wang, C. (2021). The Joint Impact of Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles on Children’s High-School Academic Achievement in Taiwan. Academia Letters, Article 283. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL283. 4 to be more acceptable to parental controls legitimacy. The findings of the present study were indeed unexpected. We found that in Taiwan, a society in which education achievement was highly valued and the great majority of children were still living with their biological parents, the optimal parenting style for childrens achievement was not authoritative parenting as consistently found in the West. Instead, permissive parenting as perceived by adolescents was the most optimal type of parenting style. Having authoritarian parents would not be adverse to Taiwanese children as far as academic achievement was concerned. The only parenting style that was negative to adolescents academic achievement in Taiwan was the combination of an authoritative father and a neglectful mother. Our findings should certainly be interpreted carefully. First of all, the substantive meaning of the perceived parenting styles should be placed in Taiwans social and cultural context. The definition of each parenting style in the present study was based mainly on the perception of adolescents. While four parenting styles could clearly be differentiated based on two dimensions: parental acceptance and parental control, the perception of parental acceptance and control, in particular, the latter, might be different between adolescents of Taiwan and those of, say, in the U.S. It seems that Taiwanese adolescents would perceive their parents control as strict only when their lives are highly regulated. Hence, in the case of permissive parenting, if parents made explicit requirements for daily schedule, how to behave, what to wear, or always be worried about their children and caution them repeatedly, adolescents would still think their parents were not strict with them. The emphasis on respect for parental authority in Chinese culture might socialize children in societies influenced by Chinese culture to be more acceptable to parental controls legitimacy. As compared to perceived authoritative or authoritarian parents, permissive parents are relatively more willing to grant their children autonomy. Hence, it is possible that permissive parenting perceived by adolescents in Taiwan is similar to the authoritative parenting perceived by their counterparts in the U.S., for instance. If this is the case, then the positive effects of perceived permissive parenting on adolescents academic achievement in Taiwan would make sense. It might also explain why authoritative parenting was not that different from authoritarian parents in its impacts on adolescent achievement in Taiwan. References [1] Muller, C. (1993). Parent Involvement and Academic Achievement: An Analysis of Family Resources Available to the Child. In Schneider, B., Coleman, J. S. 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The Joint Impact of Paternal and Maternal Parenting Styles on Children’s High-School Academic Achievement in Taiwan. Academia Letters, Article 283. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL283. 8