Parental Overvaluation Breeds a Stronger Need of Self-Esteem: The Mediation of Children’s Fear of Failure

• In Event: Understanding the Now and the Future: Parental Cognitions About Child Development, Education, and Rearing

Abstract

Parents are inclined to perceive their child through rose-colored glasses. Such a parental belief that their own child is more special and entitled than other children has been defined as parental overvaluation (Brummelman et.al, 2015). According to social-learning perspectives, parental overvaluation conveys to children that they are superior to others (Imbesi, 1999), and children might internalize and become addicted to such inflated self-views (Bushman et.al, 2011). Consequently, children might develop a stronger need of self-esteem, namely a stronger extent to which children value and crave for having positive feelings toward themselves.
To unravel the link between parental overvaluation and children’s need of self-esteem, we propose that children’s fear of failure might serve as the important underlying mechanism in the process. On one hand, parental overvaluation brings the implicit message that parents may not approve of their child unconditionally (Brummelman et.al, 2015) and may become disappointed when the child fails to stand out (Assor & Tal, 2012; Wetzel & Robins, 2016). Children may develop fear of failure from such parental socialization to avoid fall short of parental expectations (McGregor & Elliot, 2005). On the other hand, children’s fear of failure has been construed as a self-evaluative framework that influences how the children defines themselves (Heckhausen, 1991). Children who fear of failure may have a stronger need of self-esteem to compensate for their fragile beliefs toward the potential aversive consequences of failure.
The aims of this research were to investigate how parental overvaluation is related to children’s need of self-esteem, and whether children’s fear of failure acts as a mediator in the process. We hypothesized that parental overvaluation would be positively associated with children’s need of self-esteem and fear of failure and children’s fear of failure would be positively associated with need of self-esteem. Furthermore, we explored whether the mediation paths are moderated by parent-child communication. Given the fact that parenting cognitions and practices are suited in the cultural context in which they embedded (Ng et.al, 2019), we address these issues specifically in an Eastern context where parent-child relations are more interdependent (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). The current study was conducted with a large sample of 15,162 Chinese children (Mage = 10.60, SD= 48.8% girls) and their families. Parents reported on their parental overvaluation tendency (Brummelman et.al, 2015) and parent-child communication (Wu et.al, 2013). Children reported on the self-developed need of self-esteem scale and their fear of failure (PISA, 2018).
Results indicated that higher level of parental overvaluation was associated with children’s stronger need of self-esteem both directly, and indirectly through higher level of children’s fear of failure (Figure 1). The positive association between parental overvaluation and children’s fear of failure was stronger in parent-children dyads with more communication (Figure 2).
In conclusion, the current study focused on the broad topic of self and demonstrates a domain-specific path from parental overvaluation to children’s need of self-esteem through fear of failure. The findings add to our understanding of the processes how parental cognitions translate into children’s self-development.

Authors

• Yixin Tang, Universiteit Utrecht
  Presenting Author

• Shuyang Dong, University of Hong Kong (HKU)

• Sheida Novin, Universiteit Utrecht

• Eddie Brummelman, Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)

• Sander Thomaes, Universiteit Utrecht