THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTING STYLES ON STUDENTS’ CAREER CHOICE. A CASE STUDY OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN EGOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF EDO STATE.

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to investigate the Effects of parental style and its influence on students career choice in Egor local government area of Edo State. A descriptive survey research design was employed in this study. four(4) research questions were raised to guide the study.
The target population of the study one hundred and eight thousand (108,000) students with twelve (25) public junior secondary schools from Egor local government area of Edo State, with sample size of One hundred (100) students from five (5) senior secondary schools in Egor local government area were randomly sampled from the population. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The questionnaire was validated by the researcher's supervisor and two other experts in the Department of Educational Foundation; while the test-retest reliability method was adopted to ascertain the reliability of the instrument. Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation.
The study reveals that the influence of parenting styles on career choice of students include parent discuss the problem that may encountered during the choosing their choice of career, give directives in all students choice of career, set clear rules for them to choose my choice of career. The factors that influence parenting styles on career choice of students includes; parents with post secondary education, occupation influences, family socio-economic status or income, values and expectations and parent and child relationship is also a factor that influence career choice of students. The common parental styles exhibited by parents include authoritarian, permissive parents, authoritative, neglectful, and involved parenting styles. Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made for the study: School counsellors should assist parents in providing career-related modelling for their adolescents by showing them how to talk to their adolescents about their own occupations as well as about other occupations that are available in the world of work. Parents should respect their children’s differences. Family environments that show respect for differences and independence would be enormously helpful to the child‘ scareer development.