Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

6-1984

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major Professor

Gary W. Peterson

Committee Members

Priscilla White, Ruth Highberger, Francis Trusty

Abstract

This investigation examined the extent to which certain perceived parental child-rearing behaviors predicted the self-esteem of adolescents. It focused on the predictive capacity of parental support, induction, coercion, and love withdrawal on adolescent self-esteem, while controlling and testing for father's education (a measure of socioeconomic status) and family size. It further proposed to determine if parental behaviors predicted adolescent self-esteem differently depending on whether the parent was perceived by the adolescent as having low or high levels of parental reward power. The final purpose was to determine whether there were gender of parent/gender of adolescent differences in the predictive capacity of parental behaviors and reward power in relation to adolescent self-esteem.

Adolescents' perceptions of parental behaviors, reward power, and self-esteem as well as demographic and family data were gathered by a questionnaire completed by 522 high school students from intact families i a small, semi-rural community. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between perceived parental behaviors and adolescent self-esteem. The analyses were also executed under conditions of low and high parental power to determine the impact of reward power on parental behaviors in relation to adolescent self-esteem.

In general, partial support and some gender differences were found for the relationships involving parental support, induction, and love withdrawal as predictors of adolescent self-esteem. No significant relationships were found between parental coercion and adolescent self-esteem.

When parental reward power was added to the analyses, several relationships involving parental behaviors as predictors of adolescent self-esteem were significant under the conditions of high parental reward power. Gender differences emerged in these relationships. Specifically, parental support manifested a significant positive relationship with adolescent self-esteem in all of the high parental reward power models except the father/daughter model. A significant negative relationship was found between coercion and adolescent self-esteem for the mother/daughter dyad and the father/daughter dyad under the conditions of high reward power. Parental induction manifested a significant positive relationship with adolescent self-esteem in the mother/son and father/son dyad. Finally, love withdrawal demonstrated a negative relationship to adolescent self-esteem for all models except the father/daughter model under conditions of high reward power. The present study, therefore, be-gins to clarify that parental reward power does enhance the effects of parental behaviors on adolescents' self-esteem.

A major implication of the study was that parents can positively impact their youth's self esteem by using parental behaviors like support and induction which have positive implications for the self-esteem and resisting the use of behaviors like coercion and love withdrawal which have negative implications for the self-esteem. Further, parents who were perceived by their adolescents as competent (having high levels of reward power) were more likely to impact the self-esteem of their adolescents. Future research should focus on developing strategies for increasing the use of child-rearing behaviors which have positive impact for adolescent self esteem, further delineation of the parental behaviors which impact the self-esteem of children and youth, and exploration of strategies for in-creasing adolescent perceptions of parental reward power (or competence).

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