Parenting Styles and Self-Esteem as Predictors of Aggression

Aggression is defined as an intentional injury or harm to another person and is a widely researched area. More so, because attempts at curbing aggression had been futile so far and thereby, necessitating the need to study aggression at the earliest possible stages of development as prevention is always better than cure. Identification of correlates of aggressive behaviour at an earlier age would be beneficial for preventing aggressive tendencies and maybe helpful in devising a preventive and developmental counselling program so that the impact of negative traits maybe reduced, if not eliminated. Self esteem and parenting styles have been implicated in research aimed at identifying factors associated with aggression. Self esteem is our overall self-evaluation and Child rearing styles are combination of parenting behaviours that occur over a wide range of situations, creating an enduring child rearing climate. The present study was conducted to analyze the relationship between aggression, self esteem and parenting styles. The participants comprised of 100 students belonging to the age range of 18-20 yrs, selected randomly from educational institutions in Haryana. Aggression questionnaire developed by Arnold Buss and Warren (2000) was used to assess aggression level of the sample selected. Self esteem inventory developed by Stanley Cooper smith (1989)was used to find out the level of self esteem of the subjects and Parental authority questionnaire developed by John Bun was used to assess the parenting styles from the point of view of the subjects. The data were analyzed using the Pearson's Product Moment correlation and stepwise regression analysts. The results revealed significant positive correlation between aggression and authoritarian mother (p<0.05), and a significant negative correlation with flexible father (p<0.01).Self esteem was found to have a significant negative correlation with Authoritarian father (p<0.01), and authoritarian mother (p<0.01), but a significant positive correlation with flexible father and mother, both (p<0.01). Step wise regression analysts revealed that different parenting styles were strong predictors of aggression.