4.2.1 Watch the videos
Watch the two YouTube videos to increase your understanding of self-esteem in parenting. Following each video, you should reflect upon your viewing and how you could relate the content to your own parenting.
Watch this video: https://youtu.be/FScEucMMDsA
Transcription
0:00
Parenting an adolescent is hard. But imagine parenting an adolescent in a new or unfamiliar context, and where the underlying values and traditions might be at odds with those of your own cultural heritage. The focus of our study was on the estimated 17 point 5 million immigrant parents in the US today who must deal with such complex parenting issues. We targeted parents from Asian and Latino backgrounds who represent the two fastest growing immigrant groups in the US. Specifically, our goal is to examine the unique challenges that these parents face in raising their adolescent children, and how these challenges might influence their general perceptions of parenting competence, which we defined as the degree to which parents feel capable in their parenting role in general. One of the challenges that immigrant parents must deal with is related to acculturation, which broadly refers to the change that occurs when two or more cultural groups come into contact. Especially in cases when these cultures have different values and traditions. acculturation can introduce diverse forms of parenting stress, uncertainty, instability, which can strain family dynamics and relationships.
1:04
And within the family, it’s possible and certainly common to experience acculturation, conflict or gaps between parents and children, such as when children are more Americanized than are their parents. Such acculturation stress could lead to parents feeling less competent in their parenting roles. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, no work of which we are aware has directly linked these experiences to parents feelings of general parenting competence, and this was one of the goals of our study to establish this possible link. Another challenge for immigrant parents is to negotiate how to adapt and feel connected to the mainstream environment while considering what cultural heritage values to retain and pass on to their children. Other research on ethnic socialisation or the process by which parents teach their children about their ethnicity or ethnic background has grown. There’s no work that targets what we call parents cultural self efficacy, or the degree to which parents feel confident in their ability to instil or teach cultural values in their children. So for example, I’m a second generation Asian American who was raised by two immigrant parents, and I also have two young children of my own. Figuring out what cultural values and practices to transmit to my own children is one thing, but another under researched issue is how confident I am that my actual ability to communicate these values, either due to my own limited knowledge as a second generation immigrant, or due to the overwhelming influence of the majority culture, and of course, ethnic or cultural values are only one part of the picture. Another dimension is confidence and instilling knowledge and values of the mainstream American society. And yet another dimension is how to instil by cultural values are both cultural and mainstream values simultaneously.
2:45
Our work introduces this critical concept of cultural parenting self efficacy, and examines how such feelings of efficacy are related to general parenting competence in and of itself as well as and as in conjunction with acculturation conflict. So to examine how acculturation, conflict, cultural parenting, self efficacy and parents perceptions of general parenting competence are related, we conducted an internet based questionnaire study. The participants of our study were 58 Asian American and 153 Latin American parents of children in grades six to 12. Our participants included fathers and mothers and the majority of parents were up the second generation that is born in the US with at least one immigrant parent of their own. parents lived in diverse areas of the US and were recruited through Qualtrics panel, which is an online data collection service. Our analysis of a series of path models provide a general support for our hypotheses. For both Latin and Asian American parents, the more parents experienced stress or conflict associated with acculturation, the less competent they felt in their general parenting roles. Also in the face of acculturation stress, cultural parenting, self efficacy can promote perceptions of parenting competence for Latino parents more cultural parenting self efficacy, across all three dimensions of heritage, American and bicultural values and traditions, was associated with more perceived parenting competence. These direct links were not found for Asian American parents, but we did find one interaction, such that the negative association between acculturation conflict and perceptions of parenting competence was weaker. For those who felt more efficacious and transmitting heritage messages, suggesting that these Asian American parents confidence in engaging inherited cultural socialisation can protect them against the negative effects of acculturation conflict.
4:34
In summary, acculturation, conflict and cultural parenting self efficacy represent critical sources of stress and fortitude. For immigrant parents. Our results also emphasise how parenting can be influenced by cultural background values and context. There are also many practical implications of our research. Certainly parenting interventions should be culturally sensitive and tied to real world experiences are finding support The use of coping strategies or cultural resources to lessen the negative effects of acculturation conflict on general parenting competence for both Asian and Latin American families. helping parents from immigrant backgrounds feel confident and effective in terms of their cultural socialisation could constitute one source of resilience and is likely to carry some benefits. Although the exact effects might depend on the individual or situation involved.
Watch this video: https://youtu.be/4ibXHoxOzO0
Transcription
0:00
Are you interested in learning, or researchers have discovered is a correlation between different parenting styles and the self esteem of your child? If so, I’m going to walk you through the five conclusions I learned from reading multiple different scientific studies about the relationship between parenting cells, and self esteem. Let’s get started. For the best stem parenting tips and advice on YouTube, subscribe to my channel now and hit the bell to be notified when I release a new video every Thursday.
0:33
In this video, I’m diving deep into what the various research has found about the impact of parenting styles on a child’s self esteem, including what scientists have concluded is the best parenting style to increase children’s confidence. By the end of this video, you’ll have more data on what parenting style works best for you and your kids. My name is Sahar and I’m the editor of Sita stem calm, a parenting blog that focuses on helping raise children with a growth and stem mindset. Let’s get started. The first question you may be asking is, why am I focusing on self esteem? Well, a child’s self assessment of their own work is one of the most basic requirements of human beings. After basic requirements such as food safety, health and love are fulfilled. What drives human beings is the desire to be recognised, improve status, and be respected. Because self esteem is how we value ourselves. Having high self esteem is a requirement to thriving in life. So as a parent, one of our jobs is to help our child increase their confidence and self worth. And one way we passively do this, either positively or negatively is through our parenting style. So let’s see what I learned from analysing multiple different research studies on the impact of parenting style, on a child’s self esteem. A number of studies have found that authoritative parenting leads to higher self esteem in kids. Back in 1994, Professor Steinberg validated the four parenting types concepts established by baumrind. He also concluded that children of authoritative parents were more accomplished in academic, social and emotional capabilities. Other research done by grew sick in 1994. And Pomerance in 2005. made the same conclusions. If you watch my previous video, nine tips for raising high expectation kids, you’ll know that I’m a fan of authoritative parenting. So this first takeaway isn’t really a surprise, it’s more of a validation. Now, this is surprise. If you just focus on self esteem, then permissive parenting, which is a type of parenting where a child makes all their own decisions regularly results in the highest levels of self esteem and a kid even beating out authoritative parenting. Many studies have come to this conclusion, including a three year study by Martinez and Garcia, between 2007 and 2010. When they asked over 1200 11 to 15 year old Brazilian adolescence questions that are allowed researchers to determine a child’s self esteem score. These results suggest that authoritative parenting is not associated with the most optimal self esteem in Brazil. Now, one universally scientific fact is that authoritarian parenting, the parenting style where a parent has high expectations for their kids, but give their children almost no decision making power is absolutely the worst parenting style for increasing self esteem and kids. No question about it. Parents practising authoritarian parenting often have the goal of keeping the child safe, and they believe they’re doing the best thing for their kid.
4:14
But their parenting style is so strict and controlling that they unwittingly destroy the self esteem of their child and that child’s decision making skills. This has been proven repeatedly in multiple scientific studies, including a 2017 study by Dr. Tripathi and Jaden to a study by the heart Palamon tenon in 2006. Now you may be watching this and thinking Aren’t you stating the obvious here? Is it really surprising to anyone that authoritarian parenting has such a negative impact on a child’s self esteem? Well, are you maybe it is otherwise how do you explain the whole Tiger mom concept popularised by Professor Amy chewa a year from professor who wrote the best selling 2011 book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger mom. In her book, The professor argues that Western parenting is too nurturing and focus on children’s individuality. Large Chinese parents focus on arming children with skills, strong work habits and inner confidence to prepare them for the future. If you look at some of the reviews on amazon.com, clearly the tiger mom is picking up some followers. And he can’t argue the fact that both of Amy’s two as children, both are got girls are going to Harvard. So clearly she’s doing something right. So yes, there are examples of amazing kids who are raised by authoritarian parents. But what science also says is there’s a higher probability that if you were raised by authoritarian parents, you probably have a higher risk of depression, and having lower self esteem. In the 2017 study, what the researchers basically concluded was strict parents destroyed their child’s ability to cope with the world, destroyed their child’s ability to rationalise and handle the situations, making them feeling inferior, insecure, and worthless. Now, forget the last two takeaways, I want to ask you, the audience question. Where do you stand on the whole Tiger mom concept? and philosophy? Have you seen examples where this concept works? If so, leave a comment below. So while there’ll be many scientific studies looking at the relationship between self esteem and parenting style, no study has looked at it over a long period of time. So Professor Lucy Driscoll decided to look into this. And what she did was she looked at the four different parenting styles from early adolescence, all the way to young adulthood. She sampled 183 participants at the ages of 611 14, and between the ages of 18 and 21. So what did Professor school learn? Well, the study was very clear that that whole Tiger mom concept absolutely always results in the lowest self esteem and kids. But answering the question of which parenting style is the best was a little bit harder to do. In fact, what she found was that as children became older, so and aged 14 group and the age 18 to 21 year old group, the less restrictive parents were actually the higher the self esteem gap. Now, this is probably intuitive, right, Dan actually kind of makes sense. kids want more freedom as they get older. And so the data suggests that older kids self esteem improves under permissive parenting, as it gives them the freedom to make their own choices. So note that while this study is advocating that permissive parenting leads to higher self esteem, in teenagers and college students, I’m still not convinced that it’s the right parenting style, especially for my kids. While a permissive parent is likely to encourage their kids creativity and individuality, they’re also likely to allow experimentation. And this is why teenagers with permissive parents are much much more likely to indulge in alcohol and drugs. The last takeaway from Professor Driscoll study is that changing your parenting style constantly is confusing for kids, and may lead to inconsistent parenting styles, which may lead to lower self esteem. So let’s try to be more consistent. So let’s summarise what we’ve learned from all of these different scientific studies. The first takeaway is that most studies conclude that authoritative parenting is probably the best parenting style for increasing child’s self esteem. But the second takeaway also says yes, that permissive parenting is also very, very good and increasing that child’s self esteem.
9:12
The third takeaway is that in most cases, the data suggests that authoritarian parenting almost always hurts children’s self esteem. Now, the fourth takeaway is, is that if you look at it over a long period of time, right, authoritarian parenting may not always be the most optimal parenting style. That’s what Professor Driscoll learned. And the last thing that she also taught us in takeaway five is that inconsistent parenting so if you’re constantly changing your parenting style, that can really confuse a child’s self esteem. So now that you know that authoritative parenting is probably the best Purdue sell to help increase a child’s self esteem. What can you do?
9:56
Well, I’ve created a one page checklist How to start to be an authoritative parent. And I created a YouTube video, so go check that out. While research shows that this parenting style is the most effective at raising high expectation kids, it’s also the hardest to go pull off. And so I created a checklist on nine steps that you can take to improve your authoritative parenting. So you can find that link to the video and the checklist in the description right below the video. So what do you think of the five takeaways? What do you think about the conclusions that permissive parenting may lead to higher self esteem and kids? Is that higher self esteem and empowerment worth the risk of your child make making a bad long term decisions? Comment below. If you liked this video, do me a favour, go ahead and subscribe to the channel. Hit the like button and share this video with your friends so I know to make more videos like this. If you’re interested in joining a community of parents just like you then please click the link in the description to join the C to stem Facebook group. We’d love to help you out.
Now write down your reflections as a blog, this can help to consolidate your thoughts and reflections, especially in relation to your own strategies for parenting.