Topic > Relationship between parental acceptance and...

This study demonstrated that perceived parental acceptance (both mother and father) is related to adults' psychological adjustment. These findings are similar to those reported in previous studies (Veneziano, 2000; Kim, 2008), providing support for PARTheory's premise of parental acceptance and adult outcomes (Rohner & Khaleque, 2002). This result is also in agreement with previous studies conducted in other cultural contexts (Veneziano, 2000 and Lila, Garcia and Gracia, 2007). When maternal and paternal acceptance were entered simultaneously into the multiple regression to examine the first hypothesis, that is, examining which parent's warmth made a more critical contribution to adult psychological adjustment, the results revealed that only perceived parental acceptance father made a significant prediction of adult psychological adjustment. This result is consistent with the hypothesis of the current study and also with the findings of a previous study (Hussain & Munaf, 2012b). Hussain and Munaf found that perceived father acceptance during childhood is a major influence on the psychological adjustment of men and women. Furthermore, this result also provides support in Rohner and Veneziano's (2001) literature review on the importance of paternal love. This finding places importance on father's love and acceptance as equally or more important than mother's love and acceptance on offspring outcomes. However, studies have not yet been able to provide an adequate explanation of the effects of father's acceptance. There is a possibility that this effect may be due to the fact that adults perceive that the father has more power and control in the family than the mother (Radin, 1981, cited in Rohner & Veneziano, 2001). A study in Bangladesh conducted by Khaleque, Rohner, and Shirin (2010) found… at the center of the article… parent-child research. The results also revealed that there is a positive correlation between perceived mother's and father's acceptance on adult psychological adjustment, providing evidence of the direction and strength of the relationship of parental acceptance and psychological adjustment. Adults' perception of a warm and welcoming relationship with parents is important for maintaining healthy psychological adjustment. High parental acceptance would result in overall better and healthier psychological adjustment and other attributes. More longitudinal studies should be conducted in parental acceptance research to find out the causality and effect of both mother and father's love on the psychological outcome of offspring. It would also provide an opportunity to observe changes in associations between study variables as adults mature.