The last, and most significant question based on the study is, what is the correlation
between the preschool aged children‟s social emotional development and the style of parenting
used by their mother or father? Because the focus of this study was to in fact determine if such a
correlation exists, the results indicate that yes, there is a correlation between the parenting style
and the social emotional development of a preschool aged child. The only 2 children whose
ASQ-SE score placed them in a category to have a significant delay in development both had
parents who were identified as authoritarian parents. Some researchers have suggested that
parents who are more controlling of their children‟s emotions may be depriving their children of
opportunities for learning about the causes and consequences of inappropriate emotional displays
(McDowell & Parke, 2000). This finding correlates with the results of this study, showing that
those parents high in demand and low in responsiveness have poorer social emotional
development than of those whose parents utilize authoritative or permissive parenting practices.
As stated in previous chapters, authoritative parents often balance discipline with love and
concern. Permissive parents often place most of their interaction with children as a friend and
focus very little on discipline