The Impact of Biological and Foster Parenting on the Adolescents’ Personality and Cognitive Performance: A Case Study of Ghana-Lebanon Islamic Senior High School (Gliss) – Ghana

Abstract

Mental health and behavioural problems could be attributed to early childhood and the mother-child interactions. The study aimed at investigating what impact biological and foster parenting has on the adolescent’s personality, cognitive performance, self-esteem, depression and anxiety. A case study was adopted for this study and samples were selected on a randomized convenient sampling. A population of 200 students comprising 100 females and 100 males were studied of which 50 were of biological and 50 of foster parenting for both males and females. The population was drawn from the Ghana-Lebanon Islamic High School. The multivariate analysis, the Chi square and the independent t-test was used for the data analysis. Hypothesis that adolescents with biological parenting would have a higher score on cognitive performance than those with foster parenting is supported at α level of 0.05 significance. Differences also existed for various aspects of personality. Foster adolescents also showed to be more anxious than their counterparts raised by their biological parents. This reiterates the object relations theory which emphasizes interpersonal relationship primarily with mother and child. Further discussions are included in the main text of the thesis.