8/3/2019 VPA 2011 Parent Lab Poster

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Are Parents to Blame for Generation Mes Focus on the Self? Megan Goard, Jessica Hayden, Chelsea Johnson, Brad Schutzer, Hannah Smith & Natalie Lawrence

James Madison University

Introduction Method

References

Discussion

Twenge (2006) postulated that todays young adultshave earned the title Generation Me. This

generation has set itself apart from all other birthcohorts due to its excessive focus on the self,unrealistic optimism, and heightened anxiety anddepression.

Twenge argued that the self-esteem movement thatwas so popular in public schools during the late1980s and 1990s could have contributed to this

generations over-inflated sense of self. Twenge(2006, 2009) also pointed the finger at modernparentsthose who shower children with earnedpraise, protect them from others criticism, and treat

them like royaltybut there is very little empiricalevidence to support this view.

The purpose of this study was to examine therelationship between parenting styles and students

Generation Me characterist ics. We hypothesized thatperceived parental support would be positivelycorrelated with students self esteem, entitlement,

narcissism, optimism, depression and anxiety.

We also hypothesized that parents reports of

modern parenting would be positively correlated withthese characteristics.

Participants were 148 students (40 men, 108 women) enrolled in generalpsychology courses at James Madison University and 64 parents (19 fathers,45 mothers) of these students.

The students completed an online survey that included the Parental Supportsubscale from the revised Child Report of Parent Behavior Inventory,Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Personal Entitlement Scale, NarcissisticPersonality Inventory, Life Orientation Test ( a measure of optimism),Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (a measure of depression), and the TaylorManifest Anxiety Scale. They also completed a survey that measured theextent they match Twenges description of Generation Me (Gen Me). Thissurvey, developed for the present study (Cronbachs = .66), included items

such as My basic philosophy in life is, do whatever makes you happy andYou should never give up on your dreams.

We invited parents of the student participants to take an online survey. Thissurvey included a modern parenting scale (MP) that we created for thepresent study (Cronbachs = .78). The scale included items such as, Iwanted my child to consider me a friend and I praised my child for virtuallyeverything she did. Most of the participants were mothers so we did not

analyze data from the fathers.

As expected, perceived support from mothers was positively correlated withself-esteem (r= .33, p< .001), narcissism (r= .19, p= .034), and Gen Me (r=.27, p= .001). Perceived support from fathers was also positively correlated

with self-esteem (r=.23, p= .007), narcissism (r=.20, p= .022), and Gen Me (r= .23, p= .006). Mothers self-reports of modern parenting practices werepositively correlated with narcissism (r= .42, p= .005), optimism (r= .34, p=.022) and Gen Me (r= .36, p= .016). We found negative correlations betweenperceived support from mothers and depression (r= -.32, p< .001) andperceived support from fathers and anxiety (r= -.22, p=.015).

We conducted a series of regression analyses to further explore theserelationships. The overall model predicting optimism from the three parentingvariables was significant, F (3, 35) = 3.73, p= .020. Perceived support fromfathers ( =.35, p= .045) and modern parenting ( = .19, p= .012) weresignificant predictors of optimism. The overall model for Gen Me was alsosignificant, F(3,36) = 3.33, p= .030, but the only significant predictor wasmodern parenting ( = .28, p= .037).

Results

Moms

SupportDads

SupportModernParenting

Self-esteem .33** .23** .27

Entitlement .06 -.03 -.11

Narcissism .19* .20* .42**

Optimism .08 .09 .34*

Depression -.31** -.17 -.26

Anxiety -.16 -.22* -.20

Gen Me .27** .23** .36*

*p < .05. **p