Parenting and Its Role in the Development of Self-Esteem in Adolescents

The present study proposed to investigate the development of self-esteem in adolescents in relation to parenting, age and gender. A 3x2x2 factorial design with 240 adolescents of whom 120 were girls and 120 were boys from six different schools of Gorakhpur district (U.P.) and their parents participated in the study. Modified version of Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory was used to assess adolescents ‘self-esteem and its various domains i.e. General self-esteem, Social self-esteem, Home self-esteem and Academic self-esteem. Further, Multidimensional Parenting Scale (Chauhan & Khokhar, 1995) was administered on their parents to determine their parenting strategies i.e. Positive Parenting strategies (love, encouragement, acceptance, progressiveness, democratism, independence and dominance) and Negative Parenting strategies (hate, rejection, autocratic, discouragement, submissiveness, conservatism, and dependence). Analysis was done using Univariate analysis.

Results from Univariate analysis revealed that parenting has exhibited a pervasive impact on the development of adolescent self-esteem. Specifically, due to positive parenting adolescents expressed greater extent of self-esteem and its various domains which suggest that due to supportive and non-abusive parenting practices adolescents exerted a superior level of self-esteem as compared to adolescents of negative parenting group.

Further, the effect of age on self-esteem was found partially supported. Moreover, the development of self-esteem shows a linear pattern from neo to mid and late adolescence. In the present study Neo adolescents were found far superior in an exhibition of self-esteem than middle adolescents with very little variation but interestingly late adolescents showed the very poor level of self-esteem than other groups. Whereas, the main effect of gender was found non-significant. Apart from the main effect, many interaction effects were also found significant which determined that the development of self-esteem was jointly influenced by age, gender and parenting strategies. Findings are discussed.