Children's self-esteem related to school- and sport-specific perceptions of self and others.

Cassidy, Camille M. ; Conroy, David E.

Parents, through their caregiving behaviors, often serve as the most important social influences in their children's development (Grusec, 2002); however, little is known about their unique contribution to children's psychosocial development in sport. Parents' interactions with children in infancy and early childhood shape how children evaluate themselves and their surrounding environments (Bowlby, 1969). Parent behaviors, such as involvement and autonomy support in achievement domains, can lead children to evaluate themselves as competent individuals worthy of love and care. Although the effects of maternal involvement and autonomy support on children's perceived competence and self-esteem have been established in the academic domain (Gecas, 1971; Gecas & Schwalbe, 1986; Grolnick, Kurowski, Dunlap, & Hevey, 2000; Rosenberg, 1965), these relationships have yet to be established in a similar fashion in the athletic context. Furthermore, little research has compared the academic and athletic domains as important contexts of child development. Bridging the gap between the academic and athletic domains may assist in determining if the effects of maternal behaviors (e.g., involvement, autonomy support) are similar across the two domains. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between children's perceptions of maternal involvement and autonomy support in both the academic and athletic domains with children's domain-specific perceived competence and general self-esteem.

Youth Development in the Academic and Athletic Domains

From an ecological perspective, different activity settings function as contexts for human development based on the "existence and nature of social interconnections between settings" (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 6). Comparing the social characteristics of salient youth microsystems, such as academics and athletics, may enhance understanding of how these Settings influence youth development. Time use research indicates that children spend as much as 25% of their waking day in two distinct categories of activity: work and leisure (Larson & Verma, 1999). School and sport are prototypical work and leisure activities for children.

In both school and sport, children confront the struggles involved in the acquisition of new skills, practice, evaluation, social comparison, and persistence (Grusec, 2002). That is, competence is a major focus of children's engagement in these domains. Additionally, parents generally assume an instructive role initially in each domain (Grusec) and these domains provide opportunities for children to develop and demonstrate their competence to important figures such as parents. These similarities make the academic and athletic domains amenable for comparison.

Despite these similarities, meaningful differences exist between subjective experiences in each domain. During schoolwork, many youth experience high levels of both concentration and challenge but low levels of intrinsic motivation because schoolwork is a context in which mental effort is "under the control of incentives and structuring provided by adults" (Larson, 2000, p. 172). In contrast, many youth experience simultaneously high levels of concentration and intrinsic motivation while engaged in sports, making this domain a "fertile context for adolescents to develop and teach themselves a wide range of positive competencies" (p. 175). It is not yet clear how the differences in youths' subjective experiences in these two important domains may be associated with their psychosocial development.

Self-Esteem Among Pre-Adolescent Children

Preadolescence marks an important period in development, as a child must deal with many social, physical, and psychological changes, including the preparation for adolescence. Often, these changes associated with preadolescence are accompanied by a decrease in self-esteem (Frank & Cohen, 1979; Keltikangas-Jarvinen, 1990). Self-esteem refers to the "evaluation which the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself [that] expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval, and indicates the extent to which the individual believes himself to be capable, successful, significant, and worthy" (Coopersmith, 1967, p. 4). Individuals are said to have high self-esteem when they respect themselves and consider themselves worthy (Rosenberg, 1965). In contrast, low self-esteem implies self-rejection, self-dissatisfaction, and self-contempt (Rosenberg).

Self-esteem is associated with several other important psychological outcomes. Specifically, high self-esteem individuals tend to respond in more functional ways to failure when compared to individuals with low self-esteem (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003; DiPaula & Campbell, 2002), thereby potentially gaining a slight advantage in performance. Additionally, high self-esteem individuals tend to report significantly greater feelings of happiness than their low-self-esteem counterparts (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Diener & Diener, 1995; Furnham & Cheng, 2000; Shackelford, 2001). Finally, researchers have found high self-esteem to act as a buffer against anxiety (Greenberg et al., 1992). In contrast to the potentially positive effects of high self-esteem, researchers have found that low self-esteem contributes to several negative outcomes, including delinquent behavior (Baumeister et al.), depression (Murrell, Meeks, & Walker, 1991; Whisman & Kwon, 1993), and bulimia (Bulik, Wade, & Kendler, 2000; Button, Sonuga-Barke, Davies, & Thompson, 1996; Mintz & Betz, 1988).

Parents are generally considered to be an important influence on the development of a child's self-esteem because the self is a social creation and parents are key components of the child's social world. The self materializes out of symbolic interaction (Mead, 1934) and the "prerequisite cognitive capacity for role-taking," (Gecas & Schwalbe, 1986, p. 37) which allows individuals to see themselves as others see them, using reflected appraisals (Gecas & Schwalbe). The reflected appraisals of parents are especially significant for a child's self-///// concept (Helper, 1958; Jourard & Remy, 1955; Manis, 1958) in both the academic and athletic domains.

In the academic context, children's perceptions of their own abilities have been found to be more strongly linked to their parents' beliefs about the children's abilities than to their actual level of ability (Eccles-Parsons, Adler, & Kaczala, 1982). Additionally, Phillips (1984, 1987) found that the self-perceptions of children with relatively high levels of academic ability were strongly related to the children's beliefs about how their parents viewed them. Children with lower perceptions of ability believed that their parents viewed them as having low ability as well.

In the sport domain, the influence of parents on children's self-perceptions may be even greater than in the academic domain because parents have many opportunities to participate directly in their children's sport experiences and thereby provide them with "immediate, interpretive, and evaluative feedback" (Brustad, Babkes, & Smith, 2001, p. 621). Amorose (2002) recently examined the role of various reflected appraisals (i.e., mothers, fathers, coaches, teammates) in predicting female middle- and high-school athletes' perceptions of competence. Results from this study indicated that mothers, coaches, and teammates all significantly contributed to the athletes' perceived competence, whereas the reflected appraisal of fathers did not.

Parental support and interest in the child and his or her activities have been strongly related to children's self-esteem (Gecas, 1971, Leff & Hoyle, 1995; Rosenberg, 1965). Coopersmith (1967) found that three characteristics of parent-child relationships were associated with high self-esteem: (a) parental acceptance of the child, (b) clearly defined and enforced rules, and (c) respect for the child's action within the rules. Thus, children's perceptions of parent behaviors should be directly associated with their self-esteem. Given that researchers have found fathers to have less of an impact on their children's psychosocial outcomes than mothers (Amorose, 2002; Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994), the present study examined whether children's perceptions of maternal behaviors in two specific domains (i.e., academics and athletics) were associated with their self-esteem.

From another perspective, self-esteem represents children's perceptions of their competence across a variety of domains (Harter, 1978). Perceived competence refers to an individual's beliefs in her or his "capacity to interact effectively" with her or his environment (Harter, 1978, p. 297; White, 1959). Harter (1978) conceptualized perceived competence in different domains (e.g., cognitive, physical, interpersonal) as building blocks for self-esteem. Thus, children's self-esteem may be associated with parent behaviors because those parent behaviors are associated with perceptions of competence (which are components of self-esteem). Parental approval and reinforcement of children's mastery attempts can enhance perceptions of competence in a particular domain such as sport. Two specific parent behaviors are posited to provide this sense of approval and reinforcement for mastery attempts in the academic and athletic domains: involvement and autonomy support.

Parent Involvement

In the child development literature, parent involvement has been described as the amount of time and effort a parent expends in child-oriented activities as opposed to other activities (Pulkinnen, 1982). In the academic achievement literature, parental involvement has been conceptualized as the "dedication of resources by a parent to the child within a given domain" (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994) as well as the degree to which a parent is interested in, knowledgeable about, and takes an active part in the child's life (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989). In the athletic domain, parental involvement may be evidenced by (a) transportation to and from games and practices, (b) attending games and practices, (c) providing instructional assistance, and (d) purchasing the equipment necessary for the sport (Stein, Raedeke, & Glenn, 1999). For this study, parent involvement in the academic and athletic domains was operationally defined as parents being interested in, knowledgeable about, and actively participating in the child's academic and athletic pursuits, respectively.

Parent Involvement and Children's Perceived Competence. Researchers have consistently reported a weak positive relationship (average r = .21) between parental involvement and children's perceived competence in the academic domain (Grolnick et al., 1991, 2000; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). Despite the weak overall effect for this relationship in the academic domain, mothers' involvement consistently had a stronger relationship with children's perceived competence than did fathers' involvement. In the athletic domain, Babkes and Weiss (1999) found that competitive youth soccer players who perceived their fathers as being more involved in their soccer participation but who also applied less pressure to perform well had higher levels of perceived soccer competence than other children.

Parent Involvement and Children's Self-Esteem. Parental interest "conveys to the child information about his or her inherent worth" (Gecas & Schwalbe, 1986). Parent involvement and interest in the child have been linked to children's self-esteem in several studies (Gecas, 1971; Gecas & Schwalbe; Loeb, Horst, & Horton, 1980; Rosenberg, 1965). This relationship (average r = .24) was found to be weak and positive in size (according to conventional interpretations; Cohen, 1988) for both boys and girls. In the athletic context, Left and Hoyle (1995) found that children's perceptions of their parents' support, defined as parent behaviors intended to aid in children's involvement in athletics, was positively related to children's self-esteem for both male and female youth tennis players.

Autonomy Support

A second parenting construct, autonomy support, describes the extent to which parents encourage their children to initiate behavior and make their own choices (Grolnick et al., 1991) and "the degree to which parents value and use techniques which encourage independent problem solving, choice, and participation in decision making" (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989; p. 144). Clark and Ladd (2000) further defined autonomy support as the degree to which parents were responsive, reflective, and validating of the child's opinions, feelings, and perspectives. For this study, maternal autonomy support in the academic and athletic domains was operationally defined as the extent to which mothers influence their children to be independent in their decision-making and behavior in the academic and athletic domains, respectively.

Autonomy Support and Children's Self-Esteem. The degree to which parents grant their children autonomy should also have a positive effect on the child's self-esteem because reinforcing autonomous behavior communicates to the child that he or she is trusted and viewed as worthwhile by others (Gecas & Schwalbe, 1986; Loeb et al., 1980). Gecas and Schwalbe found small to moderate positive associations between children's perceptions of parental autonomy support and children's self-esteem (i.e., range in r = .06 - .40).

Autonomy Support and Children's Perceived Competence. Similarly, autonomy support should increase children's perceptions of competence in a domain because it connotes approval of their mastery attempts. Research examining the effects of mothers' and fathers' autonomy support on children's perceived competence revealed small positive relationships (average r = .24) between these variables (Grolnick et al., 1991; Grolnick et al., 2002; Grolnick & Ryan, 1989).

Purpose

To summarize, children may perceive their parents as reinforcing and approving of their mastery attempts when the parents invest time with the child in a domain (involvement) and reward the child's freely chosen behavior in that domain (autonomy support). Parental involvement in their child's attempts at mastery is likely to convey to the child a sense of approval because the parents are taking time away from themselves to show that they care about the child's experience and accomplishments. Thus, parental involvement and autonomy support should be linked directly to children's perceptions of competence within a domain. In turn, these perceptions of competence may contribute to children's global self-evaluation (i.e., self-esteem). Based on previous research demonstrating a relationship between parent behaviors in the academic and athletic domains and self-esteem (Alves-Martins, Peixoto, Gouveia-Pereira, Amaral, & Pedro, 2002; Chan, 2002; Hatter, 1985; Leff & Hoyle, 1995), it is proposed that this direct relationship may be at least partially mediated by youth perceptions of competence.