Study to determine the relationship between parenting style and adolescent self-esteem

Parents are the basic sculptors of their child’s future. There are three basic types of parenting styles - Authoritarian, Authoritative and permissive, and each parenting style has different bearing on child’s nature and self-esteem. A high level of self-esteem comes handy when life goes badly so that one treats himself with tolerance and understanding at tough times of life. This study was conducted on the adolescents and their parents attending the adolescent health clinic in a tertiary medical care hospital for various problems . Adolescents were interviewed using the Rosenberg questionnaire and their parents were interviewed using the Parenting styles and dimensions questionnaire and demographic data were collected. All data were tabulated and statistically analysed to find significant associations. Among them, 44.4% had high self-esteem, 35.2% had moderate self-esteem levels and 20.4% had low self-esteem. Regarding the parenting styles, 73.2% parents followed Authoritative parenting style, 20% followed Authoritarian and 6.8% followed Permissive style of parenting. Among adolescents receiving Authoritative parenting, 56.28% had high self-esteem levels, 30.05% had moderate and 13.66% had low self-esteem. Authoritative parenting was more common in mothers with higher levels of education (p=0.014). The results revealed positive influence of Authoritative parenting on self-esteem level of adolescents and Authoritarian parenting was associated with lower levels of self-esteem. Formal education of the mother is not associated with choosing appropriate type of parenting.