Maternal child-rearing attitudes as antecedents of self-actualization.

Abstract

Great stress in psychological research has been placed on the antecedents of human malfunctioning, while studies of psychological health are rare (2). The present study was an attempt to discover some of the parental attitudes of mochers which are related to selfactualization in their adult offspring. The Personal Orientation Inventory (4) was completed by 52 California State University at Fresno students (29 females and 23 males) as a measure of self-actualization. Examples of the POI subscales are: Self-regard, Inner directed, and Time competent. The students' mochers answered the Parental Attitude Research Instrument (3). Scores on 20 of the 32 PARI subscales (chosen a p7iori) were correlated with scores on POI subscales to yield a 12 X 20 matrix. Inter-scale reliabilities for the POI were also computed. The total number of significant correlations (25 at the p < .05 level and 13 more at p < .01) far exceeds the number one would expect by chance in such a matrix. Maternal attitude subscales which were significantly correlated (rs ranged from .28 to .50) with a number of POI subscales generally reflect parental willingness to talk to the child, to share experiences with the child, and to listen to his problems. Several examples of maternal PARI subscales which showed a relationship with a number of self-actualizing dimensions in the students are listed here. Comradeship and sharing correlated with Time competent (r = .45), Inner-directed (s = .40), Self-actualizing values (s = .46), and several other POI subscales. Encouraging verbalization correlated significantly (s = .41) with Self-acrualizing values, as well as several other POI subscales. Examples of significantly negatively correlated subscales were: Ignoring the child (e.g., r = -.40 with Self-actualizing values) and Avoidance of communication (e.g., r = -.48 with 'Time competent).