A Qualitative Study of the Influence of Parenting Styles and Self-Esteem

Abstract

The objective this study is to examine the influence of parenting style and self-esteem of adolescents on their groups from a school in Malaysia. This current study took place in a national type secondary school, SMJK, located in Penang Island, Malaysia. There were six students recruited, started from 13 to 17 years old and each of which was randomly selected for further interview. The interviews were rooted on the chosen questions from Parent Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE). The interview process facilitates the validation of data as this method will verify the accuracy of the students’ answers through the questionnaires. During the interview, researchers explored on issues of parenting style practice in the families as well as the students’ perception of their own self-esteem. Moreover, it is discovered that authoritative parenting style is the most dominant method used in modern family. Through this sort of parenting style, reasoning and communication between parents and children are emphasized, and a balance between warmth and control are discovered. Majority of the respondents have mentioned a fair level of self-esteem, with only one student explains via permissive parenting style and the self-esteem is inferior compared to the others. Subsequently, the differences of parenting styles are influencing the students’ self-esteem. However, there are indications of inconsistency between the answers in the questionnaires and interviews. Further studies with a bigger sample size are required so as to obtain more reliable and consistent data to determine the influence of parenting styles towards the adolescents’ self-esteem.