Project: Parenting and Risk Propensity

Emerging adulthood is a period characterized by identity exploration and increasing independence. This often opens up gates for an individual to engage in risk behaviours. Present study examines the impact of parenting styles on the tendency of emerging adults to engage in risk behaviour. It also focuses on the mediating role of emotionality between parenting and risk propensity. 321 (M=122, F=199) emerging adults voluntarily participated in the survey that was conducted using reliable measures assessing parenting styles, emotionality, and risk-taking propensity. The findings revealed a critical role of emotionality, as it fully mediated the relationship between authoritative parenting and risk propensity, and authoritarian parenting and risk propensity. It partially mediated for permissive parenting and risk propensity. These results show that authoritative parenting results in a healthy emotionality of a child, in turn reducing the risk taking tendency as an emerging adult. Further the study also discusses Indian parenting as a protective factor during emerging adulthood.