A Study to Assess the Perceived Parenting Style and Self-Esteem among Adolescents in Selected Schools of Belagavi City

^*Correspondence: Nisha Thapa, Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Kantipur College of Medical Science, Kathmandu, Nepal, Email:

Keywords

Parenting style • Self-esteem • Adolescents • Psychological • Religion

Introduction

Adolescents have been considered the essential component of any culture. Over 1.2 billion adolescents globally; nearly 1 in every six individuals is an adolescent. India has the highest population of adolescents (243 million), representing 21% of the total population. When teenagers mature enough to be pioneers, it is crucial to maintain their emotional well-being and gratitude in life, which help them appear sensible adults [1].

The parenting style can be defined as the parents' actions, practices and beliefs to build their children's physical, mental, social and intellectual progress. Parenting is not only about a parent's personality traits, but it relates to two-way interactions between parents and children. Parenting abilities involve knowing about the child's actions, observing the phases of the kid's development and realizing what conduct is acceptable to anticipate from a child of any age. Diana Baumrind conducted research employing empirical and many other testing approaches and established three different aspects of parenting style that is authoritarian, authoritative and permissive styles [2].

Authoritarian parenting: The type of parenting in which the parents have high expectations and are poor responsive towards their children. Authoritarian parents are strict with their rules and regulations. They anticipate that their children will completely comply and value their parents. Children who fail to follow the rules and make mistakes lead to punishment.

Authoritative parenting: Instead of being guided by an external, absolute position, they are problem-oriented and practical. These parents align the child's duty to meet the wishes and expectations of the elders with the child's freedom to be heard and get their own needs fulfilled.

Permissive parenting: Parents of this type are more responsive and are not demanding. Children are granted full power to make decisions and choices about their lives and act on them independently [3].

Self-esteem is the specific emotional assessment of an individual's self-value or personal importance. As Morris Rosenberg defined, self-esteem is a "totality of the thoughts and feelings of the individual concerning himself as an object." This requires a wide variety of views about himself and can be expressed at various stages, both positively and negatively. When an individual is assured in his ability, has a feeling of selfworth and can deal with difficulties in life, positive self-esteem is defined [4].

The parental existence is the first step in establishing a child's self-esteem. The desire for being confident in an individual's specific skill, strengths, importance and belief and to improve personal recognition and authorization, including an appreciation for themselves, is known as self-esteem. If families have developed optimistic attitudes and discernable confidence, their children are put in an advantageous position to create good self-esteem. The strengths and encouragement of parents can be an advantage for their children.

As per the WHO review, it is expected that 10%-20% of India's adolescents have one or more psychological or behavioral disorders. Hence, it can be concluded that both parents' parenting styles, i.e., mother and father, directly and indirectly, influence their children's self-esteem. Likewise, different research studies have poor self-esteem in both developed and developing countries presents a considerable difficulty. According to the centre for disease control and prevention in the United States, suicidal ideation is the third leading cause of the increase in mortality among youths aged 15 to 24. Even in India, suicidal deaths among 10 to 19 years are around 1/4^th of all deaths in boys and between fifty and seventyfive percent in girls. A study conducted in India revealed that psychological distress is independently associated with suicidal behavior. Therefore, poor self-esteem may also be one of the risk factors for adolescents with different mental health conditions. To avoid such psychological distress or mental problem and improve the adolescent's self-esteem to the optimum level, the appropriate method of parenting style plays a vital role [5].

Materials and Methods

A correlational study design was used as the study design to identify the relationship between parenting style and selfesteem. The study was conducted in two different schools, KLE international school and Sri Sidrameshwor English medium school of Belagavi city. The population for this study was all the students studying in 8^th, 9^th and 10^th standard and are between 13-17 years of age. Each class comprises 45-50 students. From the total population, the sample size calculated was 240 students. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the school and the proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to select the desired sample. Class 8^th, 9^th and 10^th were considered as strata and from each stratum, 80 students (40 students from each class of 2 schools) were selected using a lottery method [6].

Inclusion criteria

Children who give consent to participate in the study:

• The adolescents 13-17 years of age.
• The adolescents living with their parents.
• Adolescents studying in English medium schools fit the above criteria.

Exclusion criteria

• Children who are not willing to participate.
• Children who are below 13 or above 17 years of age.
• Children who are not living with their parents.

Ethical clearance

Research was reviewed and approved by the institutional review board of KAHER institute of nursing sciences and permission was obtained from the principal of both schools.

Data collection instrument

Self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the participants' parenting style and self-esteem. J. Buri's parental authority questionnaire was adopted to determine the perception of parenting style and Rosenberg's self-esteem scale was used to assess the adolescents' self-esteem. The questionnaire was divided into three sections:

Section A: Consists of socio-demographic performa.

Section B: Consists of the parental authority questionnaire for both father and mother. The questionnaire includes 30 questions. Responses to each item are made on a 5 point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to agree strongly. Each item's maximum score is 5 and the minimum score is 1. The 30 questions are divided into three subscales: Permissiveness, authoritarian and authoritative. Each sub-scale has ten questions.

Section C: In this section, Rosenberg's self-esteem scale was used to assess the self-esteem level of adolescents. The RSE scale consists of 10 items with 4 point scale ranging from strongly agree to disagree. The score of each option is given as 0, 1, 2 and 3. The maximum score for each item is 3 and the minimum score is 0. For negative statements, the scoring was done in a reverse manner. The level of self-esteem was measured as low self-esteem: (0-15), normal self-esteem (16-25), high self-esteem 25-30 [7].

Results

The socio-demographic distribution of the respondents is shown in Table 1, where the majority of the students, 67 (27.92%), were of 15 years and a minimum of 19 (7.92%) were of 17 years of age. Based on sex, the majority of the respondent, 130 (54.17%), were male and a minimum of 110 (45.83%) were female. Similarly, the maximum number of respondents, 177 (73.75%), were Hindu, 51 (21.25%) were Muslim and the rest 12 (5%) followed other religions, whereas 80 (33.33%) students each were from 8^th, 9^th and 10^th standards [8].

All students, 240 (100%) live with their parents. Based on the type of family, a maximum of 139 (57.92%) students live in a nuclear family and the rest 101 (42.08%) live in a joint family.

About 104 (43.33%) mothers of the students were graduates, 53 (22.08%) were postgraduates similarly, 53 (22.08%) and 6 (6.67%) completed secondary level and primary level education, respectively and the rest of 14 (5.83%) mother of the students completed had no formal education [9].

The majority of 130 (54.17%) of the father of the students have completed their post-graduation and a minimum of 20 (8.33%) has completed their secondary level education. The majority of the student's mothers, 170 (70.83%), were homemakers, 50 (20.83%) students' mothers did private services and the rest, 20 (8.33%), did government services. Similarly, most of the student's father, 188 (78.33%), do personal services and the rest of the student's father, 52(21.67%), does government services [10].

Table 1. Socio-demographic variable of the respondents n=240.

The distribution of perception of parenting style is shown in Table 2, where the majority of the students, 74.32%, with a mean score and standard deviation of 37.16 ± 5.690 perceived mother's parenting as authoritative style and 62.40% of students with a mean score and standard deviation of 31.20 ± 5.435 perceived as authoritarian style and rest of the 31.15%students with mean score and standard deviation of 31.15 ± 5.647 perceived as permissive style. Similarly, the majority of the students, 77.13% with a mean score and standard deviation of 38.56 ± 4.669, perceived their father as authoritative and 63.14% of students with a mean score and standard deviation of 31.57 ± 5.260 perceived their father as authoritarian style.

The rest of the 31.03% of students with mean scores and standard deviation of 31.03 ± 5.461 perceived their father as permissive [11].

The distribution of the level of self-esteem of the participant is given in Table 3, which indicates that most of 67.08% of students with a mean and standard deviation of 21.29 ± 2.48 has average self-esteem and 30% of students with a mean and standard deviation of 27.76 ± 1.51 and few students with mean percentage 2.92% has a low level of self-esteem (Figure 1).

Table 2. Mean score, percentage and standard deviation of perception of parenting style of the respondents (n=240).

Table 3. Frequency, percentage and standard deviation distribution of respondents according to their level of self-esteem (n=240).

Table 4 shows the correlation between parenting style and selfesteem, which disclosed that the self-esteem score had a positive correlation between authoritative mother style (r=0.2643) and self-esteem is negatively correlated with mother permissiveness (r=-0.0026) and mother authoritarianism (r=-0.0543). Similarly, the self-esteem score had a positive correlation with father's authoritative parenting style (r=0.3102) and was negatively correlated with father authoritarianism (r=-0.1175) and father permissiveness (e=-0.0384). Hence, the alternative hypothesis H1 is accepted (Figures 2 and 3) [12].

Table 4. Correlation between parenting style and its components scores with self-esteem scores by Karl Pearson's correlation coefficient method (n=240).

Association between self-esteem and socio-demographic variables revealed that the chi-square calculated value for gender and educational status is higher than the chi-square tabulated value at a 0.05 level of significance. Hence, there is an association between self-esteem with gender (7.2910) and students' educational status (29.43).

Discussion

The present study has been undertaken to identify the perceived parenting style and self-esteem among adolescents in selected schools in Belagavi city. Where SPSS version 21 was used for the data analysis in which both descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized. The findings of the study have been discussed concerning the objectives.

The study found that the majority of the students, 27.92%were of 15 years of age and a minimum of 7.92% were of 17 years of age. Among the students, most of 54.17% were male, whereas 45.83% were female. Similarly, 73.75% were from Hindu religion, 21.25% were from Muslim religion and rest of 5% were from other faiths, 33.33% students each were from 8th, 9th and 10th standard. All 100% of students live with their parents and 57.92% students live in nuclear family. In contrast, the rest of the 42.08% live in joint families.

Similarly, 43.33% of students' mothers and 54.17% of students father's education level was graduation postgraduation, respectively. Similarly, most of the student's mother's occupation was 70.83% was housewife and 78.33%of the student's father's occupation was private services.

The result revealed that most of the students perceived their parents (Father: 77.13%, mother: 74.32%) followed an authoritative parenting style and more than half, 67.8%, of the students had average self-esteem scores. Present study findings are consistent with the results of the study conducted by Mrs. P Vijayasamundeeswari, et al., which found that the majority of the student's parents followed an authoritative parenting style i.e., fathers: 63.9% and mothers 65.8% and maximum 70% of the students had average self-esteem score.

The findings of the correlation between the parenting style and self-esteem disclosed that the students with maternal (r=0.2643) and paternal (r=0.3102) authoritative parenting styles seem to have higher self-esteem than those with authoritarian and permissive parenting styles.

This study is supported by the survey conducted by Tolulope A. Arem, et al. which concludes that there is a positive correlation between the authoritative parenting style and adolescents' self-esteem. As per the result, there is an association between self-esteem and educational status and the gender of the students. Here, the calculated chi-square value is higher than the chi-square tabulated value. Hence, the study findings have contradicted the study conducted by Mrs. P Vijayasamundeeswari, et al., which concludes that there is no significant association between the score of self-esteem and the socio-demographic variables [13].

Conclusion

The study also entails that parents play a significant role in building the child's future. On the other side, self-esteem seems to be another critical factor discussed among adolescents. Therefore, the current study has revealed a relationship between the authoritative style of parenting and adolescents' self-esteem and has an inverse relationship with the authoritarian and permissive parenting styles.

Acknowledgement

I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Kaher institute of nursing sciences and all faculty of nursing for their support.

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