Parents' Response to Children's Performance and Children's Self-Esteem: Parent-Child Relationship and Friendship Quality as Mediators

Weina Li; Fenge Tan; Zongkui Zhou; Yukang Xue; Chuanhua Gu; Xizheng Xu

doi:10.3390/ijerph19106012

Parents' Response to Children's Performance and Children's Self-Esteem: Parent-Child Relationship and Friendship Quality as Mediators

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 15;19(10):6012. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19106012.

Authors

Weina Li^{1

2

3}, Fenge Tan^{2

3}, Zongkui Zhou^{2

3}, Yukang Xue⁴, Chuanhua Gu^{2

3}, Xizheng Xu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Management, Hunan Police Academy, Changsha 410138, China.
² Key Laboratory of Adolescent Cyberpsychology and Behavior, Central China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430079, China.
³ Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality, Central China Normal University Branch, Wuhan 430079, China.
⁴ Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12222, USA.

Abstract

Previous research has revealed that parents' success-oriented response to children's performance promotes children's self-esteem, while failure-oriented response damages their self-esteem. However, the potential mediating mechanisms are unclear. Therefore, the present study investigated whether parent-child relationship and friendship quality mediated the relation between parents' response to children's performance and children's self-esteem. For this purpose, 859 children in Central China completed the Parents' Response to Children's Performance Scale, Buchanan Scale of Closeness to Parents (CPS), Friendship Quality Questionnaire (simplified version), and Self-Perception Profile tests. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that: (1) parents' success-oriented response was positively associated with parent-child relationship, friendship quality, and children's self-esteem. Parents' failure-oriented response was negatively associated with parent-child relationship and children's self-esteem, but it was positively associated with friendship quality. (2) Parent-child relationship and friendship quality were identified as the serial mediators between parents' success- or failure-oriented response and children's self-esteem. These findings suggest that parents' failure-oriented response should be reduced and parents' success-oriented response should be increased to develop children's self-esteem and establish a sound social network system for children.

Keywords: children; friendship quality; parents’ response to children; parent–child relationship; self-esteem.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Achievement
Friends*
Humans
Parent-Child Relations*
Self Concept
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

The study was supported by the Research Program Funds of the Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality at Beijing Normal University (2021-04-014-BZPK01), National Education Sciences Planning Grant (BBA180080), Open Project of Key Laboratory of Adolescent Cyberpsychology and Behavior (Central China Normal University) & Hubei Province Key Laboratory of Human Development and Mental Health, Ministry of Education (2019B07), Hunan Social Science Fund project (20YBQ045), Foundation of Hunan Educational Committee (20C0751).