The relationship between perception of parenting styles and self-esteem of individuals: A mixed method approach

Parents are the child’s first role models and play a very important role in every child’s initial development which further impacts their personality. Parenting is viewed as the intricacy of raising a child and is beyond the biological relationship that the parents and the child share. Parenting styles are a combination of parenting behaviors that occur over a wide range of situations and create an enduring child-rearing climate.  Self-esteem plays an important role in cognitive and motivational aspects of an individual’s personality which lead to resilience and vulnerability. The objective of the present study is to explore the relationship between perception of parenting styles and self-esteem among young adults. It was hypothesized that there would be a statistically significant relationship between perception of parenting styles and self-esteem among young adults. For this, a non-probability sampling technique was used to collect a sample of 140 participants between the age group of 18-22 and was administered the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and the Perception of Parent Scales (Grolnick, Ryan & Deci, 1991). The data was analyzed both quantitatively (correlation method) and qualitatively (thematic analysis). Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to specify the relationship between the variables. A mailed-interview method was also used to collect more in-depth data from 10 males and 10 females. This data was then further thematically analyzed to identify significant features of the parent-child relationship on the basis of the subscales that Perception of Parent Scales measures. The study revealed that there is a statistically significant relationship between perception of parenting styles and self-esteem among young adults and it was also seen that males and females reported different perceptions of their parenting which impacted their self-esteem in different ways. The study was concluded by suggesting implications and future directions for the research community.