Abstract

Young adult transition from secondary school to higher institution has not been an easy task. Many young adults are confronted with higher an academic demand which in one way or the order is beyond their expectation mentally, emotionally, and socially. This has resulted in high level of depression, academic distress, frustration which is highly paraded among Nigerian University undergraduates. This activated an investigation on the predictive influence of social adjustment and parenting style on psychological well-being of undergraduates in three southwest universities. Correlational research design was adopted for this study. A sample of 218 was drawn from three universities. Data was collected with valid instruments having suitable reliability value above 0.7. The study reveals that social adjustment and parenting style jointly predicted undergraduate psychological well-being of undergraduate students. The independent variables accounted for 33.9% variance in student’s psychological well-being. Social adjustment was found to be the strongest predictor of student’s psychological well-being followed by authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. It was inferred that an increase in social adjustment, authoritative and authoritarian parenting style will increase the tendency for students to enjoy psychological well-being. Permissive parenting style will reduce the tendency for students to enjoy psychological well-being. Among others it was recommended that parents should adopt authoritative and sometimes authoritarian style rather than permissive. Parents are enjoyed to expose their children to the reality of life that they might find it easy to cope outside their home. Giving assignment of different sort will help building their personality and resistance to rigour.