Self-Esteem And Happiness Of Children And Mothers Of Different Parental Authority

Abstract

The present study aimed at finding out how different parenting styles have relations with self-esteem and happiness of the children. For this purpose initially a total of 120 children studying in classes 8^th to 10^th were taken on an availability basis and their respective 120 mothers were also taken. The mothers were divided into three groups of parenting styles –  permissive, authoritarian and authoritative on the basis of their highest scores on a particular parenting style. Thus, 30 mothers in each group who clearly fall into any of the three parenting styles making a total of 90 mothers were taken, 30 mothers who did not fall clearly in any of the three parenting styles were dropped. Thus, finally a total of 90 participants of selected mothers, 30 in each group were taken and 30 students of non-selected mothers were dropped. One-way ANOVA and Tukey test for multiple comparisons were carried out on the self-esteem and happiness scores of the children. Results for self-esteem showed that children of authoritative parenting style had higher self-esteem than the children with permissive and authoritarian parenting styles. However, self-esteem of children of permissive and authoritarian parenting styles did not differ significantly in their self-esteem. Further, results for happiness showed no significant difference between happiness of children with different parenting styles