How Family Background Influence Self Esteem Among College Students
Self esteem is something that is seen in most school environment in our societies today. We all have an innate sense of who we are: our self. Not only do we possess a highly elaborated cognitive self-concept, but we also hold a highly accessible affective sense of how skilled, lovable, and worthy we are as a person. This global evaluation of one’s worth is known as self-esteem. Self-esteem is typically viewed as a continuous dimension ranging from high to low: people with high self-esteem feel very positive about themselves, whereas those with low self-esteem feel ambivalent or uncertain about themselves.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Family background plays a very big role on a child’s life. Family background refers to all the objects, forces and conditions in the family which influence the child physically, intellectually and emotionally. Children coming from different family backgrounds are affected differently by such variations and that is why some children have good family background while the family background of others is poor. Some families, the background may vary from time to time for the same individuals.
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The author further stated that because it is parents who are primarily responsible for establishing the family and exercise control over it, they are responsible for the type of family background that exists. This means that parental attitudes are very important in promoting healthy family background, and healthy family background is possible when parents adapt to the culturally defined roles of parents to the needs of the changing young generation
SELF ESTEEM
Self-esteem is the panacea of modern life. It is seen as the key to financial success, health, and personal fulfilment, and it is regarded as the antidote to underachievement, crime, and drug abuse. Self-esteem is also popular in academic circles. The widespread appeal of self-esteem attests to its importance, but this popularity has had an undesirable consequence. Self-esteem is currently spread so thin that it is difficult to know just what it is. It is used as a predictor variable (some researchers study whether high self-esteem people think, feel, and behave differently than low self-esteem people), an outcome variable (some researchers study how various experiences affect the way people feel about themselves), and a mediating variable (the need for high self-esteem is presumed to motivate a wide variety of psychological processes). In short, self-esteem has become a protean concept so capable of changing form that its value is in risk of being undermined. Self-esteem is commonly defined as the belief that a person is accepted, connected, unique, powerful, and capable. Self-esteem issues take on a particular significance for students with learning or attention problems because self-assessment of this concept requires the ability to evaluate and compare. These are two skills that are extraordinarily challenging for students with special needs. Therefore, these children are often unable to accurately measure or assess their own self-esteem.
SYMPTOMS OF SELF-ESTEEM
Common signs of low self-esteem include feeling tired a lot of the time, having little motivation to get things done, living bored with life and yourself and wishing your life was better, thinking negatively about your abilities and possible opportunities, feeling like a failure or feeling hopeless and depressed. Our materialistic world where people continually compare themselves with those around them highlights our insecurities and often leads us to feel negative about ourselves and the way we live. This makes us to lose sight of the value of our own individuality and then feel inadequate and unsatisfied. This can become one’s enduring personality trait. Generally, the common signs of low self-esteem are, consistent anxiety and emotional turmoil, always accentuating the negative, unable to accept compliments, overly concerned about what others think, inability to trust one’s own opinions, constantly depressed, socially withdrawn, self-neglect, eating disorders, and unable to take on challenges, always quitting and resigning, arrogant, and extreme self-defensive behaviour (someone who retaliates far worse than what would normally be expected).
The signs of low self-esteem also include: exaggerated perfectionism, feeling worthless, incompetent and unrealistic about our abilities, feeling unloved, being overwhelmed with fear and negative thoughts, being unrealistic about goals, fear of change, distorted view of self and others and constant need for validation and recognition. Someone may throw a lot of “pity parties” as their unyielding thirst for validation, spotlight, and recognition which help them feel better. A person suffering from low self-esteem may feel better if he/she is reassured by his/her friends or care-givers that all is well. Such people often feel defeated to think they can change other people for the better, let alone themselves, hence their personalities are driven inward, rather than outward.
CAUSES OF LOW SELF ESTEEM
Our self-esteem develops from our experiences and relations from birth. Negative experiences and troubled relationships lower it while good experiences and strong bonds raise it. Hence the foundation of self esteem is laid in the family at infancy. As a child, parents are the biggest influence on self-esteem.
Children who are consistently criticized, berated, yelled at or beaten by a parent quickly learn they are worthless. If children are continually ignored, teased or ridiculed at home or in school or if they are expected to be perfect all the time in order to be accepted at home or in school, they will eventually develop a poor self-image. Hence, being harshly criticized, being yelled at or beaten, being ignored or teased, being expected to be perfect all the time, or having experiences of several failures such as in the school or sports will result in low self-esteem or self-image. If a child constantly fails at school or does poorly in sports, they will experience identity issues, especially when they reach their teens. Hence, no single event or person determines your level of self esteem. It develops over time and can change with time and events. Therefore the feelings that we are valued and understood, and that our worries can be soothed, gives us an internal picture of our worth and the feeling that the world is a safe enough place to live and work. It is noteworthy to understand that early experiences teaches us to nurture ourselves and develop a resilience to deal with life’s knocks and blows and protect ourselves from encountering too many dangers.
FAMILY BACKGROUND AND SELF ESTEEM
Research focusing on early childhood has suggested that family background is a crucial factor for the development of the self. The early childhood family background has a long-term, and possibly enduring, effect on self-esteem that can still be observed in adulthood. The most important predictor was the quality of family background, including quality of parenting and parental stimulation of learning. Moreover, the quality of the family background partially mediated the effects of other characteristics of the family background, such as the quality of parental relationship, maternal depression, presence of father, and poverty. However, an important limitation in that study was that initial levels of self-esteem could not be controlled for. Therefore, in the present research, we examined prospective effects of the family background on children’s self-esteem, using data from a longitudinal study in which repeated assessments of both constructs were available over time. The goal of the research was to identify factors that affect the development of self-esteem in children and adolescents. Specifically, we examined the effects of parenting behaviors (such as warmth, hostility, monitoring, and involvement in child’s education) and other characteristics of the family background (such as quality of parental relationship, family values, maternal and paternal depression, economic conditions of the family, and presence of father). Research from the broader field of child temperament suggests that self-esteem could show a reciprocal relation with parenting; that is, parenting behavior may lead to changes in children’s self-esteem, and children’s self-esteem may elicit changes in parenting behavior. Consequently, we examined prospective effects in both directions, from parenting to self-esteem and from self-esteem to parenting.
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