The Interrelationship of Parenting Styles, Self-Esteem, and Students’ Mental Health

T. Aboutalebi Ahmadi

The present study was carried out to examine the interrelationship of parenting styles, self-esteem, and students’ mental health among Tehrani eleventh graders. The research method was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population comprised all Tehrani eleventh grade students. Four hundred students (200 girls and 200 boys) and their parents were selected through random multi-stage cluster sampling. The instrumentation consisted of Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ), Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) as well as Goldberg General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). The obtained data were analyzed through mean, standard deviation, correlation coefficients, and multivariate regression. Results showed that there was a significant relationship between self-esteem and authoritative parenting style. In fact, these two variables had a considerable common variance and authoritative parenting style enhanced adolescents’ self-esteem. Correlation coefficients indicated that there was a significant relationship between authoritative parenting style and students’ mental health. In addition, there was a significant association between parenting styles and self-esteem. Furthermore, a meaningful relationship was observed between parenting styles and mental health and mental health can be predicted based on parenting styles.

Key words: parenting style, self-esteem, mental health