Parental Co‐Construction of 5‐ to 13‐Year‐Olds' Global Self‐Esteem Through Reminiscing About Past Events

Abstract

The current study explored parental processes associated with children's global self-esteem development. Eighty 5- to 13-year-olds and one of their parents provided qualitative and quantitative data through questionnaires, open-ended questions, and a laboratory-based reminiscing task. Parents who included more explanations of emotions when writing about the lowest points in their lives were more likely to discuss explanations of emotions experienced in negative past events with their child, which was associated with child attachment security. Attachment was associated with concurrent self-esteem, which predicted relative increases in self-esteem 16 months later, on average. Finally, parent support also predicted residual increases in self-esteem. Findings extend prior research by including younger ages and uncovering a process by which two theoretically relevant parenting behaviors impact self-esteem development.

How Children Construct Views of Themselves: A Social‐Developmental Perspective

“…Harris et al. () found support for this idea. In their longitudinal study involving children ages 5–13, parents’ warmth and support predicted higher self‐esteem over time.…”

“…And this can be achieved without sacrificing children's natural environment or our own experimental control. As articles in this special section have illustrated, laboratory experiments can be designed to mirror children's natural environments (Cimpian et al., ; Lapan & Boseovski, ), and longitudinal studies can include controlled assessments of actual parent–child interactions (Brummelman et al., ; Harris et al., ).…”

“…Individuals from non‐WEIRD countries make up just 3% of our participants, while making up 85% of the world's population (Nielsen et al., ). The special section helps address this limitation by reporting research in non‐WEIRD populations (e.g., Mexican‐American adolescents and their parents; Knight, Carlo, White, & Streit, ) and by calling for systematic research on how children from diverse cultural backgrounds differ in their beliefs about the nature of the self (Haimovitz & Dweck, ; Starmans, ), their views of themselves (Thomaes et al., ), and the socialization experiences that influence their views of themselves (Brummelman et al., ; Harris et al., ).…”

Maternal narration about parenting pride and regret is related to youth emotion regulation

“…Another body of work relevant to emotion socialization focuses on parent–child co‐narration of children's emotional experiences (Fivush, Berlin, Sales, Mennuti‐Washburn, & Cassidy, ; Fivush, Bohanek, & Marin, ; Fivush, Sales, & Bohanek, ; Lunkenheimer et al, ). When parents co‐narrate with a focus on elaborating and explaining emotions, children have more advanced self and social development (Bird & Reese, ; Laible & Thompson, ), and higher levels of well‐being (Fivush et al, ; Harris et al, ; Marin, Bohanek, & Fivush, ). These relations suggest that co‐narration with youth about youths' emotional experiences is a window on how parents respond to their children's emotions (see, e.g., Fivush et al, ; Lunkenheimer et al, ).…”

“…Parent–child co‐narration research has not examined how parents narrate their own experiences, and whether parents' own narratives are related to their emotion socialization behaviors. In a recent exception, Harris and colleagues () examined parents' stories about low‐points from their own lives. Parents whose own written low‐point narratives included more emotional explanations also were more likely to emphasize emotional explanations when co‐narrating experiences with their children.…”