Abstract:
Youth violence, both in and out of school, is worldwide problem. Students’ violence is
manifested in form of bullying among students, physical fights gender violence and
violence against school property during school strikes. Violence in secondary schools
wastes a lot of learning time as students and teachers spend a lot of time dealing with
disciplinary issues related to violence, at times it has also led to loss of life and school
property in school fires during school strikes. The aim of this study was to examine the
contribution of parenting styles towards students’ violence in schools, in Embu county.
Survey research design was adopted for the study. The study was anchored on
Bioecological theory and parenting styles theory. Questionnaires were used to collect
data from students on parenting styles and students’ violence, focus group discussion
schedule was used to collect in-depth views of students while interview schedule were
used to collect views of guidance and counseling teachers. Purposive sampling was used
to select a sample of 15 schools which had reported more cases of violent behavior out
of the 132 secondary schools in the county. Stratified random sampling and systematic
random sampling were used to select 399 participants. Purposive sampling was used to
select 15 Guidance and counseling teachers from the 15 schools. For the purpose of
this study parenting styles were limited to authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive
indulgence and permissive neglectful while students’ violence was limited to physical
fight amongst students and destruction of property in the school. The study found that
parents have a big role to play in influencing their children’s violent behavior through
poor role modeling, inadequate advice and lack of listening to their concerns. The paper
discusses contribution of parenting styles on violence among secondary school students
in view of these findings.
