Parenting Practices and Secondary School Students’ Social Adjustment in Delta State, Nigeria

This study examined the influence of parenting practices on the social adjustment of secondary school students in Delta State, with a focus on how variations in parenting practices and students' gender contribute to patterns of adolescent adjustment. Employing a descriptive survey research design, the study addressed three research questions to assess the direction of the relationship between the variables. A sample of 370 Senior Secondary Students from the three Senatorial Districts of the state was utilized using a multi-stage sampling technique. Data were gathered using two research instruments, one adapted and the other self-constructed for the study. Data were analyzed using SPSS, and Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient and multiple regression were utilized to assess the relationship. The study's findings reveal a very weak and negative relationship between parenting practices and students' social adjustment, suggesting that the relationship is not statistically significant. The result also reveals that students' social adjustment does not significantly differ based on the parenting practices they are exposed to as the model summary shows a very weak correlation (R = 0.061) and an extremely low explained variance (R2 = 0.004) with the ANOVA result confirming that the regression model is not statistically significant (F (4,365) = 0.340, p = 0.851). In addition, the findings revealed a significant composite effect of parenting practices and gender on social adjustment (F(7, 361) = 2.361, p = .023), accounting for 4.4% of the variance (R2 = 0.044) in students' social adjustment. However, the individual effect of gender alone (F = 0.052, p = 0.821) was not statistically significant, indicating that male and female students did not differ significantly in their levels of social adjustment when considered independently. The study's findings posit that parenting practices, though playing a crucial role in shaping these students' adjustment, cannot be the sole determinant of students' social adjustment; other contextual or psycho-social factors may also be at play. The study concludes that parenting practices have a statistically significant but limited influence on students' social adjustment. It recommends that targeted interventions by parents, educators, counsellors, school-based mental health professionals, and policy makers be aimed at fostering supportive home environments that enhance adolescents' social competence and emotional well-being.