Correlations between Preschoolers' Self-Esteem and Mothers' Educational Attainment

Abstract

Of the many things a young child learns, his sense of self-worth is the most valuable. It is therefore important to identify the factors which are the most potent influences on his self-esteem. Many studies have demonstrated the strong influence of parental variables. For example, children with high self-esteem are likely to have parents whose selfesteem is also high (1, 2). Other studies have reported salutory effects of maternal warmth, empathy, and positive regard on the child's self-esteem. One maternal factor whose effects are not well known is educational attainment, although it seems reasonable to expect a positive correlation with children's self-esteem as mothers' high self-esteem might be related to satisfaction derived from educational attainment. Twelve white male and 12 white female preschoolers were randomly selected from the Lansing, Michigan, Head Starc program. Their self-esteem was measured on the Purdue Self-concept Scale for Preschool Children. The Kuder-Richardson 20 reliability of this instrument was .86 for these subjects. The instrument's content validity rests on its inclusion of items which represent several facets of children's self-esteem. And since children's scores on the instrument increase as a function of positive feedback after task completion, the instrument appears to have some measure of construct validity (V. G. Cicirelli, personal correspondence. 1975). For males, the mean and standard deviation were 28.6 and 6.5, respectively, while for females the mean was 31.2, and the standard deviation was 5.6. Over-all, the mean and standard deviation were 29.9 and 5.7, respectively. The range of mothers' educational attainment, obtained by grade level, was Grade 9 to 1 year of college. The mean level was Grade 11, and the standard deviation was 1.25 grades. For females the Pearsonian 710 berween self-esteem and maternal educational attainment was .77 (9 < .002). For males no was .58 (9 < ,025). Across all children, r3 was .57 (p < .002). The higher correlation berween daughters' self-esteem and mothers' educational attainment might be partly amributable to daughters' stronger identification and might be influenced by the heterogeneity of the daughters in this regard. The coefficients of determination indicate that the proportions of variance in self-esteem accounted for by maternal educational attainment are about 60% for females, 35% for males, and 32% for the entire sample. Over-all the contribution of maternal educational attainment appears substantial.