2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify key aspects of parenting approaches and practices used by influential parents of female undergraduate engineering students and map them to existing parenting styles. Through inductive analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six (6) female engineering majors, we investigated the parenting approaches employed by their parents and key factors that may have influenced their daughters' decisions to pursue engineering. The parenting practices used by parents of female engineering students revealed a balance of support, responsiveness, and high academic expectations. The findings of this research- open communication, encouraging independent decision making while providing support, holding high academic expectations while being responsive- align closely with the authoritative parenting style characteristics described by pioneering researcher Baumrind (1996). Since the data analysis revealed strong similarities between parents of female engineering students and the characteristics of authoritative parenting, future studies should further investigate the link between engineering majors and parenting styles using a broader sample. This could provide more conclusive evidence about which styles are most common among parents of female engineering students.
Keywords: female in engineering, parents & engineering, parenting styles, parenting and engineering