“ 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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