Perceived parenting styles, adult attachment, and emotional intelligence in Indian young adults: A parallel mediation approach.

Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) plays a vital role in how young adults navigate relationships, academic pressures, and personal growth. While family environments are widely recognized as foundational to emotional development, the associations between perceived parenting, adult attachment, and EI in adulthood remain underexplored, particularly in non-Western contexts. Therefore, this study investigated the association between perceived parenting styles and EI among Indian young adults and examined whether adult attachment dimensions explain these associations. A sample of 151 healthy young adults (aged 18-25 years; 90 females, 61 males) from educational institutions across the Indian subcontinent completed standardized self-report measures of perceived parenting style, adult attachment, and EI. Correlation analyses revealed that perceived authoritative parenting was significantly and positively associated with EI, while authoritarian and permissive parenting showed weak, non-significant negative trends. At the attachment level, EI was positively associated with the close dimension and negatively associated with the anxiety dimension, with no significant association with the depend dimension. Parallel mediation analyses indicated that authoritative parenting exerted a strong direct effect on EI; the combined indirect effect through attachment was non-significant. Notably, the depend dimension acted as a competitive suppressor, weakening the positive parenting-EI path. Authoritarian parenting had no significant total or indirect effects on EI. These findings suggest that growing up with warm, structured, and communicative parenting lays a meaningful foundation for emotional competence in adulthood. In collectivist societies like India, where family bonds are central to identity, promoting authoritative parenting alongside secure relational patterns may be a particularly powerful way to enhance EI in the next generation.