Maternal perceptions and adolescent self-esteem: a six-year longitudinal study.
A six-year longitudinal study investigated the development of self-esteem in relation to mother's child-rearing attitudes, role satisfaction, and perceived temperament of the child. Participants were two age cohorts of girls and boys from the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study, being 6 (n = 416) and 9 years old (n = 408) at the beginning of the study (baseline). Scores regarding mother's hostile child-rearing attitudes, mother's low role satisfaction, and maternal perceptions of child's difficult temperament (high activity, negative emotionality, and low cooperativeness) were obtained at baseline and three years later. Self-esteem was measured by self-reports six years later, at the ages of 12 and 15. The results indicated considerable gender differences. Among girls nearly all childhood variables individually predicted self-esteem, whereas among boys the associations were less evident. Additionally, perceived difficult temperament at baseline predicted hostile child-rearing attitudes at first follow-up, which further predicted low self-esteem among girls only.
Heinonen
Kati
K
Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Räikkönen
Katri
K
Keltikangas-Järvinen
Liisa
L
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002668:Child Rearing / Q000523:psychology*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D002666:Psychology, Child; D011594:Psychometrics; D012042:Registries; D012649:Self Concept; D012737:Sex Factors