Influence of Parenting Styles and Developmental Stages on Identity Formation among Adolescents

Paternal attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that appear as family pattern or parenting styles play a key role in personality development and stabilizing the identity of adolescents. The present study assesses parenting styles and identity formation status of adolescents studying in and around Mysore city. A total of 400 adolescents (200 early and 200 late adolescents) were randomly selected covering Mysore city and nearby rural areas, of which equal number among were male and female adolescents and also equal number of them were from urban and rural areas. They were provided with Parental authority questionnaire (PAQ) developed by Buri (1991) and Aspects of Identity Questionnaire IV (AIQ – IV) developed by Sampson (1978). PAQ measured perceived parenting styles. The AIQ scale measured personal, Relational Social and Collective areas of identity formation. The collected data were, coded and analyzed using SPSS software. The data was analyzed by Two-way ANOVA to find significant difference if any, in the developmental stages, area of living as well as gender of the participants. Results revealed that, adolescents with authoritarian Parenting styles had higher personal identity formation than adolescents with permissive and authoritarian parenting styles. Developmental stage showed significant influence on all components of identity-Personal, Relational, Social and Collective, where in early stage adolescents had higher identity than adolescents at later stage. In general, this study showed that the developmental stages had considerable effect on the collective identity formation in both early and late adolescents.

It is during adolescent stage, that parents usually encounter new challenges and they vary from those of earlier stages of life. One such challenge is the desire for freedom which an adolescent not only wishes but demands for (Lightfoot et al., 2009).There are other problems like craving for self-identity. Identity formation has several of issues of personal identity and an identity in which the individual has get some sort of comprehension of them as a discrete and separate entity. This can happen individualization in which case the undifferentiated individual tries to become unique, or undergoes stages in which differentiated facets of life this to become a more indivisible whole (Palmer, 2008).
Researchers attempted to work on parenting styles and statuses of identity or special identity planes. They mentioned that, the parenting styles show their influence on achievements of identity in teenage (Santrock, 1995). The successful identity lies in the development through acceptance of traditional values and appropriately expressing them. In this way teenagers need their parent's influence of their parents and influence of their peer group influence to inculcate traditional values. Very great influence from parents and/or coevals may interfere with personal teenager engagement. Hence, parenting styles has higher influence in reaching the identity during teenage. Exploring the relation between parents and quality of relationship which takes an important role in an adolescent's identity development Ragelienė (2016), reported that the connection from parenting style to adolescent's identity diffusion work through the differentiation of self. Further, in trying to find the relation between the liberal parenting style and the not will defend status of identity, Laboviti (2015) reported that there is, relation between them however there is no relation between the authoritarian parenting style and imposed level of identity. In contrast Ratener (2013) observed no, significant relationship between maternal responsiveness, attachment, and the normal style of identity. He further claimed that his results could be used to aid such programs which focused positive youth development by stressing on parental interaction, warmth, and support. Romano (2004) found that parental acceptance and psychological control have links with foreclosure, and three dimensions parenting are associated with identity diffusion.
Studied about Identity Development from Adolescence to Adulthood Waterman (1982),he observed that, on expanding the identity construct so as to expanded to include the various by which an identity is formed, it is predicted that over time there will be progressive developmental shifts in identity status, that means, from the identity diffusion status into the foreclosure or moratorium status, again the foreclosure into the moratorium status, and from the moratorium into the identity achievement status. The association between adolescents' achievement strategies with the parenting styles experienced in the families (Aunola, Atattin & Nurmi, (2000) Adolescents of authoritative families used most adaptive goal strategies it had expected low levels of failure, task irrelevant behaviour and passivity, and the applying self-enhancing attributions. These results explain the basis for knowing some of the processes by which parenting styles influence adolescents' academic success and performance., Earlier studies found that parents who develop their children with appropriate nurture, independence and firm control, get succeeded in making their children highly competent, socially skilled and proficient (Lightfoot, Cole & Cole, 2009). Adolescents who got the experience of authoritarian parenting with have a greater binding with grades than adolescents who undergo other parenting styles (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts & Fraleigh, 1987) The present study makes an attempt to evaluate the effect of different types of parenting styles on identity formation in adolescence with an intension to select the most effective parameter in this regard. It is presumed that Parental styles will have marked influence on Identity Formation in early and late adolescent stages.

Participants:
The participants of this study included 400 adolescent's (200 boys and 200 girls) selected randomly from different schools and colleges situated in bothUrban and Rural areas in around Mysore city. The age of the participants ranged from 10 to 19 years who were classified into early and late adolescents.

Tools:
1. Parental authority questionnaire (PAQ; Buri, 1991) The PAQ has two type of forms, one relating to mothers' parental authority, and the other to fathers' parental authority. Each form consisted of 30 items. Responses to each item is made on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The PAQ yields separate scores for each participant; mother's permissiveness, mother's authoritarianism, mother's authoritativeness, father's permissiveness, father's authoritarianism, and father's authoritativeness. The scores can range from 10-50, in which higher scores indicate that parent is sharing majority of the characteristics of the particular parenting style.

Aspects of Identity Questionnaire -IV (AIQ -IV, Sampson, 1978)
Aspects of identity questionnaire was developed selecting items from Sampson's (1978) list of identity characteristics as these were found to represent the areas of personal and social identity (Cheek & Briggs, 1981, 1982. Subsequently, some of the items were reworded, some others were eliminated, and along with it new items added so that the reliability and content validity improved .Because the psychometric analyses indicated that certain items were originally scored in the social identity category (e.g., "Being a part of many generations of my family" which were tending to cluster on communal or collective identity, hence a third scale for this domain was developed (Cheek, Underwood, & Cutler, 1985;Cheek, Tropp, Chen, & Underwood, 1994). Neither the social nor collective scales focused on intimate relationships with close friends or romantic partners, hence fourth scale for relational identity orientation ("Being a good friend to those I really care about") was added to AIQ-IV (Cheek, Smith, & Tropp, 2002). Therefore, in the present study, the fourth version of Cheek, Smith and Tropp (2002) was used. To overcome prevailing any confusion and enhance validity, the Persian version of the questionnaire was adopted translation by two experts in the field confirmed the translated questionnaire. The number of items form as per Likert Scale under each category is as follows: a. personal identity: 10 items b. Social identity: 7 items c. Collective identity: 8 items d. Relational identity: 10 items e. Special: 10 items (Mehriet al.2011).

Procedure:
The research was conducted using descriptive research design as it described the phenomena under study in its natural settings. The study was carried out in Mysore City situated in Karnataka state. The study targeted 500adolescents who were aged 10 to 19 years from 4 rural schools and 4 urban schools. Random sampling was used to select the 400 number of students. A prior appointment was made with school authorities in Mysore to apprise them of the objectives of the study and to obtain their permission for data collection. Afterwards, a tentative schedule for data collection was developed in discussion with the authorities. Later, taking permission from the concerned authority, subjects were assessed on parental authority questionnaire (PAQ) and Aspects of Identity Questionnaire -IV (AIQ -IV). Further, data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and two way ANOVA. Personal Identity formation: Parenting styles had significant influence over personal identity formation as the obtained F value of 4.862 was found to be significant at .008 levels. The mean personal identity scores of adolescents with permissive, authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles were 34.15, 33.79 and 36.03 respectively. Further, Scheffe's post hoc test revealed that mean scores of adolescents with their perceived permissive and authoritarian parenting styles were statistically same, and only mean scores of adolescents with perceived authoritative parenting styles was high. Between developmental stages also a significant difference was observed (F=14.325; p=.000), where it was found that adolescents in their early stage had higher personal identity formation scores than adolescents in later stage of adolescences. The interaction effect between perceived parenting style and developmental stage was found to be nonsignificant (F=0.824; p=.439), indicating that pattern of scoring by adolescents in early and late adolescents was same irrespective of the type of parenting styles they perceived shown by their parents.

Relational Identity formation:
On further analyzing the data to explore the relational identity formation using Two way ANOVA, it was observed that parenting styles did not have significant influence over relational identity scores (F=2.847; p=.059). The mean relational scores of the adolescents with perceived Permissive, Authoritarian and Authoritative styles were 32.23, 33.14 and 34.32 respectively, which were statistically same. However, developmental stage had significant influence over relational identity scores (F=26.45; p=.001), where it was found that early adolescents had higher relational identity than late adolescents (M= 35.27 and M=31.56) respectively. The interaction effect between parenting styles and developmental stages was found to be non-significant (F=0.647; p=.524), revealing that pattern of scoring by early and late adolescents in different parenting styles was same. Social Identity formation: Parenting styles had no significant influence over social identity formation as the obtained F value of 0.516 was found to be non-significant. The mean social identity scores of adolescents with permissive, authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles were 21.86, 22.22and 22.54, respectively which were statistically same. Between developmental stages a significant difference was observed (F =15.832; p=.000), where we find that adolescents in their early adolescence stage, had higher social identity formation than adolescents in late adolescence (mean scores 23.24 and 21.30 respectively). The interaction effect between parenting style and developmental stage was found to be non-significant (F =0.146; p=.864), indicating that pattern of scoring by adolescents in early and late adolescents was same irrespective of the type of parenting styles they perceived as.

Table 2, Mean scores of Identity Formation (Social and Collective) in early and late adolescence by varied parenting styles and results of two-way ANOVA
Collective Identity formation: Results of Two-way ANOVA revealed that parenting styles do not have significant influence over collective identity formation scores (F=2.242; p=.108). The mean collective scores of the adolescents with Permissive, Authoritarian and Authoritative styles were 24.50, 25.29 and 25.99respectively, which were statistically same. However, developmental stage had significant influence over Collective Identity formation scores (F=13.965; p=.000), where it was found that early adolescents had higher Collective identity scores than late adolescents. The mean collective identity scores of the early and ate adolescents were 26.43and 24.35 respectively. The interaction effect between perceived parenting styles and developmental stages was found to be non-significant (F=0.742; p=.477), revealing that pattern of scoring by early and late adolescents in different perception of parenting styles was same.

Main findings of the study:
• Adolescents with authoritarian Parenting styles exhibited higher personal identity formation as compared to adolescents with permissive and authoritarian parenting styles.

•
Developmental stage showed significant influence on all components of identity including Personal, Relational, Social and Collective, where adolescents in early stages showed higher identity than adolescents at later stage. As a social system, family comprises of a group of people living together by marriage, reproduction and rearing children. Family, undoubtedly, as the most important organization which paves the way for the development of human physically, mentally and socially (Shayesteh, Hejazi, & Foumany, 2014).Results of several studies have several that the parental attitudes, activities and actions appear taking the form of family patterns or parenting styles. Becuse the importance of these two purposes, exports discuss parenting styles and their effects on the growth of children among social factors, parents and family system have prominent impact on person's identity and how it has shaped. In fact, majority experts examine the impact of family on individual and decide family as the most crucial institution that shapes the identity of children (Schultheiss & Blustien, 1994). In this respect, Adams (1985) has concluded that parents can either facilitate or delay the positive growth of identity. Paternal attitudes, beliefs and behaviors appearing as family pattern or parenting styles play a key role in personality development and fixing their identity (Abbaspour, Farrokhi, & Ali, 2015).
In the present study, it was observed that parenting styles significantly influenced personal identity formation. Such results were also brought out earlier by Santrock (1995) who several the importance of parenting styles in identity formation in teenagers, Ragelienė (2016), reported the established links from parenting style to adolescent's identity diffusion which operate through the differentiation of self. Other study by Laboviti (2015) suggested a moderate relation between liberal parenting style and not so clear status of identity, but did not establish any a relation between the authoritarian parenting style and imposed status of identity. Studying on the effects of parenting styles on Identity formation and extent of adjustment among college students, Luyckx, Soenens, Goossens, and Vansteenkiste (2007) observed that parents who apply authoritative parenting styles realize that they are responsible for all behaviors of their children and they get assured that their children develop a type of independence. These parents encourage and motivate their children in always all aspects of life and as a result of which their children, when they grow to become adolescents included better personal identity as compared to other children who experience demanding parenting styles in the family. Wargo (2007), demonstrated that an authoritative parenting style produce a number of positive developments in adolescents. Authoritative parenting style which includes parental monitoring and supervision encourages teen's exposure to positive actions and lowers his opportunities for getting engaged in delinquent, risky behaviors (Wargo, 2007). A warm but firm approach towards parenting problems teens to become independent within 2appropriate parental limits and boundaries.
Present study also brought out the fact that parenting styles did not show any significant influence on relational identity, social identity and collective identity formation. Further, we observed that adolescents in early adolescent stage showed higher personal identity formation scores than adolescents in late adolescence stages. The development is not having either a definite end-target, of achievement, besides it is also not unidirectional, that us, always proceeding from low status to the high: a reverse developmental pathway is not ruled out. Several status transitions put forward by the developmental hypothesis do not take place, and the developmental pathways are also not so less comprehensive. The results several no indications to the times that identity development proceeds faster in a certain times of adolescence than in other periods. However, the stability of relational identity increases, especially during post adolescence, and a slow identity development results in lower level of psychological wellbeing. (Meeus, Iedema. & Vollebergh, 1999). There is very limited research dealing with early and late adolescence and identity formations. Finally, the result showed that there is lake of interaction effect between parenting style and developmental stages on identity formation. Thus, it can be concluded that parents need to start behaving in authoritative way with their adolescents such a way that the adolescent develop a total sense of identity within themselves. Further, it was observed that late adolescents showed lesser identity than early adolescents. This could be the concern for developmental psychologists to investigate further into the identity issues, to arrive at a concrete definite respected identity formation during adolescence.