Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Academic Performance of Senior Secondary School Students in Benue State

This study investigated the relationship between parenting styles and academic performance of senior secondary school students in Benue state, Nigeria. The study examined two parental variables namely: authoritative and neglectful. Academic performance indicators explored include:  communication skills and creative skills respectively. Two hypotheses guided the study. Correlation design and regression analysis were adopted for the study. The sample size of the study is made up of 396 respondents from a population of 40282 using Taro Yamene formular. Two self-structured questionnaires tagged “Parenting Style Questionnaires (PSQ) and Academic Performance Questionnaires” (APQ) were used for data collection. Data collected for the study were analysed using mean scores, standard deviation and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) to answer research question, while regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha levels. The findings of the study revealed that authoritative parenting style correlated positively with academic performance of male and female senior secondary school students while neglectful parenting style correlated negatively with academic performance of male and female students’ academic performance in Benue State. Based on the findings, recommendations were made such as parents should adopts, authoritative parenting style due to its positive relationship with academic performance.