The relationship between perceived parenting approaches and mother's irrational beliefs and parental attitudes

In this study, the relationship between mothers' perceived parenting approaches and their parenting attitudes towards their own children and irrational beliefs were examined. The study group, consisted of 490 mothers, who have children in the 2-6 age range, living in 2019 in Turkey with access to social media. In this study, Young Parenting Scale was used to determine the perceived parenting approaches. Parental Attitude Scale was used to evaluate parental attitudes. Irrational Beliefs Scale of Parents was used to determine irrational beliefs. In addition, the demographic characteristics of the mothers who participated in the study were evaluated with the Sociodemographic Information Form which was prepared by the researcher. According to the findings of the study, there was a negative relationship between democratic parenting and authoritarian parenting and between democratic parenting and expectations. There was a positive relationship between authoritarian parenting and emotional deprivation and punitive mother. There was a positively significant relationship between normative / patterning father and defective / condescending father, and punitive father and non-changeable / suppressing father. According to the results of the analysis, mothers who did not work perceived their mothers as emotionally deprived and closed to changing / prone to suppressing their emotions. Additionally, mothers who did not work, considered their own fathers as deprived from emotional care. There was a significant difference between the parental attitude scale and the irrational beliefs scale scores of the parents according to the number of children they had. As the number of siblings increased, democratic parenting tendency scores and permissive parenting tendency scores decreased. As the number of siblings increased, authoritarian parenting tendency scores and expectations-related scores increased. There was a significant difference in perfectionism scores according to parental age. The perfectionism scores of the mothers aged 20-29 were higher than those of the 30-39 age group. All these findings were evaluated in the light of the literature.