Early childhood development (ECD) has been recognised to be the most important
contributor to long-term social and emotional development. Therefore, positive
parenting is paramount to foster quality parent–child interaction. Previous
research shows that for parents to adopt a positive parenting style, some degree
of parental knowledge is required. The aim of this study was to compare the
relationship between knowledge of child development and parenting styles in
low and high socio-economic groups of parents in ECD centres. A crosssectional
study was conducted using a correlation-comparative research design.
The sample consisted of N = 140 parents with children between two and five
years old from low and high socio-economic groups. Descriptive statistics and
Pearson correlation were used to analyse the data. The findings also show that
there is no correlation between knowledge of child development and
authoritative parenting styles. However, correlations do exist between the other
variables.