Comparison of Rural and Urban Children According to Home Environment and Parenting Style

The present study was carried out in Hisar district of Haryana state. The sample consisted of 100 girls between the age group of 7-8 years and their parents (both mother and father). Hence, the total sample for the study was 300 (100 girls and 200 parents). Parenting Style and Dimensions Questionnaire (Robinson et al., 1995), Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (Bradley and Caldwell, 1984) and Vineland Adaptive Behaviour scale developed (Sparrow et al., 1984) were used to assess the parenting style, home environment and behaviour of the children, respectively. Results revealed significant differences for all aspects of home environment, namely responsivity (Z= 2.90^∗) encouragement of maturity (Z=3.47^∗), emotional climate (Z= 3.66^∗), learning material and opportunities (Z= 5.50^∗), enrichment (Z=6.51^∗), family companionship (Z=6.38^∗), family integration (Z=3.22^∗) and physical environment (Z=5.26^∗) and significant differences between parenting style, namely authoritative, authoritarian and permissive in both mother and father parenting. Result further revealed that significant differences were found between respondents of rural and urban areas in aspects of adaptive behaviour namely, communication domain, daily living skill domain and motor skill domain. It was observed that urban respondents performed better than rural respondents in all aspects of adaptive behaviour.