Parenting Style and Its Relationship with Hope and Self-Esteem of Adolescents

The study was aimed at investigating the relationship between perceived parenting styles of mothers and fathers with hope and self-esteem among adolescents in India. The sample consisted of 80 participants from northern India aged between 15-18 years. Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991), the State Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1996), and the Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1979) were used to collect data about the three variables. The PAQ assesses permissiveness, authoritative and authoritarian parenting among both mothers and fathers as perceived by the adolescent. Upon analysing the correlation between hope and self-esteem scores with perceived parenting styles of mothers and fathers, respectively, it was found that Authoritative parenting style had a significantly positive correlation with hope and self-esteem. A significantly negative correlation was found between Authoritarian parenting style and hope and self-esteem. It was also concluded that fathers’ authoritarian parenting had a greater negative impact on self-esteem and hope of adolescents. Our results were found to be congruent with previous research in the area as well as the societal and cultural findings related to parenting in India.