Parenting style and emotional stability in predicting psychological well-being: A psychosocial study of adolescents

Abstract

Psychological well-being during adolescence has gained increasing attention in contemporary psychological research due to rising emotional, academic, and social challenges faced by young individuals. Adolescence is a critical developmental stage marked by emotional vulnerability, identity formation, and heightened sensitivity to family and social environments. The present study aims to examine parenting style and emotional stability as significant psychosocial predictors of psychological well-being among adolescents. Adopting a correlational research design, the study investigates the relationships between different parenting styles, namely authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive, emotional stability as a personality trait, and overall psychological well-being. The study is grounded in a psychosocial framework that emphasizes the interaction between environmental influences, particularly parenting practices, and individual emotional characteristics in shaping adolescent mental health. Data were collected from school-going adolescents using standardized and reliable psychological tools measuring parenting style, emotional stability, and psychological well-being. Appropriate statistical techniques, including descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, and multiple regression analysis, were employed to analyze the data. The findings reveal that authoritative parenting style and emotional stability are positively and significantly associated with psychological well-being, whereas authoritarian parenting style shows a significant negative relationship. Emotional stability emerges as the strongest predictor of psychological well-being, highlighting its crucial role in enabling adolescents to regulate emotions, cope with stress, and maintain emotional balance. The combined predictive analysis confirms that parenting style and emotional stability together explain a substantial proportion of variance in adolescent psychological well-being. The study concludes that adolescent psychological well-being is best understood through an integrative psychosocial perspective that considers both family environment and individual emotional traits. The findings have important implications for parents, educators, mental health professionals, and policymakers in designing effective interventions to promote emotional stability and psychological well-being among adolescents.