Correlation of Perceived Parenting Patterns on the Personality Traits of Medical Students

Introduction: Parents are children's primary nurturers, and the responsibility of proper guidance of their children falls on their shoulders. Each parent, however, differs in the way they interact with their children. Do these interactions correlate, in any way, with the way the personality traits that their children develop, when they grow up, is the question that has been tried to answer in this study. Methodology: The study was conducted on 100 MBBS students of the 4th year of MMMC and H Kumarhatti, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India. Two self-administered questionnaires were administered to the students: (1) International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE)- ICD 10 was used to screen for the personality traits of students and (2) the Perceptions of Parents Scale to assess the students' retrospective perception of their parents' methods of parenting. Result: MAS and FAS were found to be significantly negatively correlated with paranoid trait among students;MW was significantly negatively correlated with paranoid trait among students; and FI,FASand FW were significantly negatively correlated with borderline trait, and FI was significantly negatively correlated with dependant traits. Conclusion: Parenting style of both parents as seen in the study, does show correlation with development of some personality traits of their wards.