Achievement in the subject of mathematics requires special mathematical skills, interests, abilities and attitudes. The performance of the student in the academics and particularly in mathematics depends on hard work, patience and motivation. Parental encouragement act as a catalyst for providing motivation for fulfilling the academic desires and may help the adolescents in becoming emotional stable and mature and vice versa. The present study was conducted to find out the extent of relation that exists between parental encouragement and the emotional maturity of students studying mathematics in the secondary stage.The analysis of data shows that the coefficient of correlation between parental encouragement and emotional maturity "r" is 0.843, which reveals that there is significant positive correlation between parental encouragement and the emotional maturity of the students studying mathematics. The results of the data analysis also show that the t-value between the emotional maturity of mathematics students with higher degree of parental encouragement and emotional maturity of mathematics students with low parental encouragement is 3.99, which is significant at 0.01 level of significance. Therefore, it can be inferred that there is significant difference in emotional maturity of mathematics students with high parental encouragement and those with low parental encouragement.
Keywords: Parental Encouragement, Emotional Maturity, Mathematics, Students