Intergenerational transmission of parenting styles among Ao Naga ssociations with psychological well-being in adolescents

INTRODUCTION In any individuals life parents are the most important figures who nurture, protect and teach them; facilitate them towards growth and development; and ultimately support them to become a healthy functioning individual. Parents play significant roles to inculcate and educate their children about different skills that they can use to navigate through the rollercoaster ride that is called life. Hence, parenting a child is one of the most complex tasks that individuals take up during their lifetime. Parenting behavior that parents adopt leaves a huge impact on different aspects of their children's lives: emotional, social, spiritual and psychological. Most of the current parents employ parenting behaviors to rear their children based on how they were raised by their parents as that is the only reference point that they can take, given the fact that they were exposed to that particular type of parenting behavior as they were growing up. Thus, the present study has been undertaken to investigate the nature of transmission of parenting behavior from one generation to the next particularly amongst the Ao/Nagas and to understand the relationship between parenting and the psychological well-being of adolescents. 1.1 Parenting The origin of the word parenting can be understood as being derived from the Latin word 'parere' meaning 'to bring forth' ("Parenting", 2012, p.728). Parenting can be defined as "the raising of children and all the responsibilities and activities that are involved in it" ("parenting", n.d.). It is a multifaceted process through which parents,