Resilience in university students: Academic success, recollected parental style, and coping strategies

Coping with challenges is important for finding one's way in life and for success in pursuing one's objectives including higher education attainment. Parents are both blamed and praised for many things, not always justified, but is success in life, or part of it, associated with parenting styles (as recollected by the adult children)? This study linked recollections about parental styles with academic success among university students and also examined the relationship between coping strategies and student academic success. Questionnaires on perceived parenting styles, coping strategies, and academic performance (self-recalled) were administered. Results indicated that recollected authoritative parenting style was conducive to higher academic performance, while permissive parenting style was detrimental and authoritarian parenting neither conducive nor detrimental. No clear relationships were found in this student sample between coping strategies and academic success. Implications are drawn with attention to the importance of authoritative parenting as a foundation for subsequent wayfinding, exemplified in relation to success at university.