Self-Esteem and Appraisals of Parental Behavior

Adolescents' levels of self-esteem as a function of their own versus their parents' appraisals of parental nurturance and parental authority were investigated. Results revealed that (a) both mothers'andfathers'nurturance (as perceived by the adolescents) were positively related to self-esteem, (b) based upon the adolescents' appraisals, parental authoritativeness was directly related to self-esteem whereas parental authoritarianism was inversely related to self-esteem, (c) adolescents' assessments of parental nurturance and authority were more strongly related to self-esteem than were the parents'assessments of these variables, and (d) regression analyses suggested that parental authority may be an important source of parental nurturance information for adolescents.