Association between Parenting Styles and Dental Caries in Preschool Children

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between parenting styles and childhood dental caries using a sample of 3 to 6 years old children in Korea.The subjects were 158 children aged 3 to 6 years old and their parents in Korea. The parenting styles were divided into three groups (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) using a translated version of the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ).Among the 353 parents/child dyads, 158 questionnaires were returned. Authoritative parenting style was the majority (95.6%), followed by authoritarian (3.8%), and permissive (0.6%). There were no statistically significant differences between dental caries and parenting styles. The mean of dft index in authoritative group was lower than others. In the authoritative domain, the higher the authoritative tendency, the lower the dft index.Overall, authoritative parenting styles resulted in low rates of dental caries for the children. The stronger the authoritative tendency of the parents, the lower the experience of dental caries in the children. Therefore, parenting styles were likely to affect the oral health of a child, but it seemed necessary to supplement the evaluation tool to evaluate the parenting styles. Abstract 78Corresponding author : Daewoo Lee

Prevalence of Parenting Style in a Group of Children With Primary Dentition in Their First Dental Visit: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…On the contrary, the results of our study revealed a lower prevalence of authoritative parents than what was found by (Lee et al, 2020) in South Korea and by (Alagla et al, 2021) in Saudi Arabia, where the authoritative parenting style was dominating, while the prevalence of permissive and authoritarian parents was higher in our study than what was found by (Lee et al, 2020) where they have very low rates of permissive and authoritarian parents. However, in Saudi Arabia the authoritarian style didn't exist they only have two parenting styles and this might be because of the shift in parenting styles worldwide as denoted by (Alagla et al, 2021).…”

“…Regarding parenting style and its effect on children's caries experience, our results showed that there was no significant relation between them as in (Arrepia et al, 2019) and (Lee et al, 2020). The non-significant association between dental caries and family impacts in our study could be explained by the low number of children suffering from severe dental caries.…”