“ Across theories, many have suggested that early developmental experiences play a highly formative role in the development of future self-esteem and psychopathology.”( Maxwell and Huprich 1) Maxwell and Huprich did a study on over 500 people with the minimum age being 18 and mean age being 22. They had these people answer multiple questioners regarding their parental situation growing up and their level of attachment to their parents at that time. They also had to answer questions about themselves( 295). The results of the study done by Maxwell and Huprich showed that emotional neglect had a negative correlation with self-esteem( 300).( Self-love and self-esteem are not the same thing; however, they go hand in hand. When a person has low self-esteem, they don’ t think that they are good enough for something and don’ t believe in themselves. When someone struggles with self-love they struggle with being able to love themselves and be accepting of themselves. A person who does not love themselves will often have low self-esteem as well.)
I conducted my own research by creating an anonymous poll on the social media platform of twitter. I asked my audience to vote on one of four options on how their parental relationship was growing up and how it affected their self-esteem. The four options were: Neglectful / low self-esteem Neglectful / high self-esteem Loving / low self-esteem( no effect) Loving / high self-esteem Theoretically, if people fully understood the question being asked and then options presented, no one would have picked option two because it is proven neglectful parents cause their children to have low self-esteem. It is possible to have neglectful parents and have high self-esteem, but this high self-esteem would be the result of an outside variable, not their parents. I expected more people to have loving parents than neglectful parents as a whole. In this poll, I was hoping to see that everyone with neglectful parents would select option one. Options three and four were there to show that loving parents cannot guarantee high self-esteem, although children with loving parents are significantly more likely to have high self-esteem than to have low self-esteem. Leading to the conclusion that there are variables outside of parents that can affect self-esteem whether it be physiological or social.
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