Abstract
This study examined the relationship between parenting styles and practices and the self-esteem of adolescents in middle to late adolescence age from Hebrew-literate Arab-Bedouin families. It aims to inspect this central developmental issue in a culturally traditional Arab sector, where parental authority and the parent-child relationship in the family may differ from western families. The study consisted of parents and their children from 123 Bedouin families, who completed the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ: Robinson et al., 2001), the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ; Buri, 1991), and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965). The parents’ sample included 71 fathers and 52 mothers, and the adolescents’ sample included 78 boys and 45 girls, whose ages ranged from 14 to 18 with a mean age of 16.00 ± 1.40. Most children reporting on their parents’ parenting styles perceived them as authoritative (about 45%). The parents’ group’s parenting styles varied by their education, as authoritative parents were significantly more educated than non-authoritative parents. The findings indicate that adolescents who perceived their parents’ parenting style as authoritative reported significantly higher self-esteem in comparison to their counterparts who perceived their parents’ parenting style either as authoritarian or permissive. Furthermore, the parents’ reports of their parenting styles accounted for about 30% of the variance in the adolescents’ self-esteem, with the authoritative parenting being the only style associated with high self-esteem and its association with this variable was considerably stronger than those of the non-authoritative parenting styles. Our findings, drawn from separate reports of parents and their descendants, underscore the merits of authoritative parenting in the context of Bedouin adolescents’ self-esteem. Together with other recent evidence, they consolidate the assumption that this style is the cross-culturally preferred style within diverse developmental contexts of children’s well-being.
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Yaffe, Y. Identifying the parenting styles and practices associated with high and Low self-esteem amongst middle to late adolescents from Hebrew-literate Bedouin families. Curr Psychol 42, 16131–16142 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01723-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01723-6