Parenting Style, Personality and Self Esteem: A Correlational Study

Abstract

Parents play a highly influential role in their child's development. Parenting styles refer to a set of strategies that parents adopt to raise their children. The approach used during the parent-child interactions has a lifelong impact on the child. In order to explain the influences of parenting styles on personality and self esteem present study was conducted on 200 students in the age group of 14 to 16 years (mean age-15 years) studying at various public schools of Haryana. Tools used for data collection were the (1) Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) (Buri, 1991), (2) Neo- Five Factor Inventory (Costa, McCrae 1992) and (3) Self-esteem inventory (Coppersmith1989). Subjects were contacted in groups and data were collected. The responses were scored and statistically analyzed using Pearson’s correlation and stepwise regression analysis. Results indicated that Authoritarian dimension of parenting style has significant positive correlations with neuroticism and conscientiousness dimensions of personality. Authoritarian parenting style also demonstrated a significant negative correlation with agreeableness. Authoritative style was found to correlate significantly and positively with self esteem total and also with social self esteem. Permissiveness dimension of parenting style yielded significant positive association with social self esteem. Stepwise regression analysis revealed authoritarian parenting style as a strong predictor of neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness dimensions of personality. Permissiveness and authoritarian parenting styles predicted social self esteem, while authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles predicted overall self esteem. Findings have implications in regard to our current understanding of the relationships between Parenting style, Personality and Self esteem.