Abstract
Research has shown variables of parental nurturance (acceptance, encouragement, support) of their children to be positively correlated with their children's self-esteem. This study investigated the effects of parental nurturance and the use of permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative parental discipline upon the self-esteem of college students. College students (N=335) completed a demographic information sheet and five questionnaires designed to measure parental nurturance, parental discipline, and self-esteem. The results revealed that parental nurturance of both the mother and father were more strongly correlated with self-esteem than were the parental discipline variables. While the use of authoritarian and authoritative discipline significantly correlated with self-esteem, regression analyses revealed that their effects upon self-esteem were primarily due to their influence upon parental nurturance. The six variables that correlated significantly with self-esteem were mother's nurturance, father's nurturance, mother's authoritarianism, mother's authoritativeness, father's authoritarianism, and father's authoritativeness. The familial variables of parental nurturance and parental discipline were more strongly correlated with the self-esteem of females than with the self-esteem of males. (Author/NB)