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Grandmother and Parent Influences on Child Self-esteem

^a Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York
^b Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York

	ABSTRACT

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OBJECTIVES. This study tests a model of intergenerational influences on childhood self-esteem that proposes paths from grandmothers' drug problems to grandchildren's self-esteem via parents' drug problems and parental adaptive child rearing and from grandmothers' maternal acceptance to grandchildren's self-esteem via parents' unconventionality and adaptive child rearing.

METHODS. This longitudinal study uses data obtained from interviews with a New York City sample of black and Puerto Rican children (N = 149) and 1 of their parents and from mailed questionnaires or comparable interviews with those parents' mothers. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model.

RESULTS. The LISREL analysis found that, with 3 exceptions, all of the hypothesized paths were significant. The total effects analysis indicated that parents' adaptive child rearing was the strongest latent construct, a finding that was consistent with this construct's proximal position in the model.

CONCLUSIONS. This study suggests that mothers' drug problems are not just near-term risks for their children, but also pose long-term risks for their children's future functioning as parents and thereby for their grandchildren. The relative strength of parents' adaptive child rearing in this intergenerational model indicates that this area should be the focus of therapeutic intervention efforts, but addressing future grandmothers' drug problems may have positive effects on multiple generations.

Key Words: intergenerational transmission • drug use • child rearing • children's self-esteem

Abbreviations: SEM—structural equation model • df—degrees of freedom • GFI—goodness-of-fit index

Self-esteem is an important factor in the development of personality. A longitudinal study of adolescent self-esteem found that membership in early continuous, moderate, and increasing self-esteem trajectory groups coincided with healthier outcomes than membership in steadily decreasing and consistently low self-esteem trajectory groups.¹ In addition, much research has shown that high self-esteem acts as a buffer against problem behavior,² whereas low self-esteem has been related to an increased risk of such problem behaviors as aggression, crime and violence, teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, tobacco use, and eating disorders.^3–5 Therefore, it is important to understand the factors that can shape children's self-esteem to promote children's future well-being and lessen the risk for problem behavior.

There is a growing body of empirical literature concerning intergenerational continuities and discontinuities in personality and behavioral characteristics and in parenting.⁶ However, few studies have linked these intergenerational patterns to children's self-esteem.⁷ Studies have shown intergenerational consistency for parenting styles, alcoholism, drug use, and other problem behaviors.^6,8,9 Several investigations have also linked the parent/child relationship to problem behaviors in the younger generation.^10–12 The current study adds to the literature by examining the interrelationship between grandmother and parent predictors of childhood self-esteem in the subsequent generation. Our hypothesized model depicting the pathway from grandmother to parent to the third generation appears in Fig 1. This is the first 3-generation study of paths to children's self-esteem involving psychosocial characteristics of each generation. This study is also significant because it is based on a community sample of black and Puerto Rican families, populations that have been understudied in this area of research. Because this is primarily an inner city sample, the grandparents and parents may have more variable parenting skills and the children may have more variation in their levels of self-esteem than would be found in a mainstream sample, thereby increasing the likelihood of finding relationships.^2,7,13,14

View larger version (13K): [in this window] [in a new window]   FIGURE 1 The hypothesized pathways of the 3-generation SEM.

To our knowledge, only 2 studies have demonstrated a relationship between parent substance abuse problems and the next generation's poor parenting practices.^19,20 This relationship is consistent with longitudinal and cross-sectional data supporting an association between drug use and other antisocial behavior and impaired parenting within 1 generation.^9,10,21 The current study hypothesizes that a direct association between the grandmothers’ substance use problems and the parents’ parenting will be related to the third generation's self-esteem.

This study examines not only the role of grandmothers' drug use, but also of her maternal acceptance, in relationship to parental unconventionality and to parental adaptive child rearing as predictors of the third generation's self-esteem. Findings from our longitudinal study of a primarily white sample support an association between the grandmother-parent as a youth relationship, via the parents' young adult personality to the toddlers' problem behavior.¹⁰ The present study hypothesizes that parents' unconventionality will serve as a mediator between the grandmothers' maternal acceptance and the grandchildren's self-esteem.

The often-found association between one generation's parenting style and that of the succeeding generation, has been explained primarily by a combination of learning or modeling and bonding.^6,8,22,23 Although the more rigorous research has continued to focus on the transmission of hostile parenting, others have assessed the intergenerational associations of warm and constructive parenting.²³ In addition, recent research has included predominantly white samples or has not reported the racial/ethnic breakdown of its diverse samples.^6,8,22,23 This study will extend this literature by having the following: (1) an exclusively minority sample; (2) each generation respond about itself, including generation 3; and (3) child rearing related to a potentially protective outcome behavior.

Some studies have assessed the consequences for unconventionality of earlier drug use. Adolescent drug use was associated with lower levels of social conformity in young adulthood,²⁴ lesser autonomy and perceived competence,²⁵ and rebellious behavior in late adolescence.²⁶ These studies are the basis for our hypothesizing a cross-sectional path from parent drug use to their unconventionality in the prediction of their children’s self-esteem.

Numerous investigators have substantiated a path from parent unconventionality via their child rearing styles to their child's behavior.^6,8,10 These studies have substantiated the mediating role of child rearing in this chain, but uniformly the focus has been on the links between problematic parent personality attributes, problematic parenting, and problematic child behavior. This study contributes by positing a path between the latent constructs in the prediction of a protective factor, namely, self-esteem.

Parental behaviors that promote positive interactions between parent and child play a crucial role in shaping a child's self-esteem.^2,27,28 In contrast to this previous research, our use of data from 3 generations enables us to obtain the parents' report of their adaptive child rearing and the children's report of their self-esteem. To our knowledge, there have not been studies of grandmother parenting and grandchild's self-esteem in a primarily Puerto Rican and black sample. This study hypothesizes that grandmother maternal acceptance and parent adaptive child rearing will be related to the third generation's self-esteem.

The current study will test a model (Fig 1) that proposes paths from grandmother drug problems to the third generation’s self-esteem via the mediators of parent drug use and adaptive child rearing and from grandmother maternal acceptance to the third generation’s self-esteem via parent unconventionality and adaptive child rearing.

	METHODS

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Sample
This longitudinal study includes 3 generations of urban black and Puerto Rican families. Generation 1 (grandmother) consists of the mothers or mother substitutes of the generation 2 (parent) young adults who have participated in our longitudinal study. Generation 3 (grandchild) consists of the biological children of the young adults. For this analysis, grandmothers were seen at time 1 (1994–1996), and parents and their children were seen at time 2 (2001–2004). Parents had also participated before these data collections, when they were early adolescents attending schools serving the East Harlem area of New York City. The third generation children were 7 to 12 years of age and, given budget constraints, needed to live within 90 miles of New York City. Please see Table 1 for characteristics of the sample.

Procedure
Before participating, grandmothers completed informed consents. Twenty-nine of the grandmothers completed mailed questionnaires, and 91 were interviewed in person. The mailed questionnaires and structured interviews were the same and were available in English and Spanish. The interviews took 1 hour. Parents signed their own informed consents. At least 1 parent signed the informed consent for his or her child. Each child also assented to participate. Parents who had multiple children in the study were interviewed at the time of each child's interview.

As often as possible, interviewers were matched to parent's gender and ethnicity based on the participants' self-reports. However, men never interviewed females. All of the parent and third generation interviews were conducted in English, because this had previously been the preference of all of the parent participants. The mother interviews took 2 hours each; the father and third generation interviews each lasted 1.5 hours. For the children, rest periods were included.

Measures
The measures included in this study have been related to drug use and other problem behaviors and some to self-esteem in studies of other samples.^10,11,29 This study's scales are based on item intercorrelations and reliabilities and are grouped into latent constructs. The variables in 2 constructs are from the grandmothers' data, and those in the other 2 constructs are from the longitudinal parents' data. Please see Table 2 for the measures. The third generation's global self-esteem scores ranged from 5 to 16 (mean: 13.7; SD: 2.6) on a 4-item measure, which was related to parental acceptance in a primarily white adolescent sample (see Table 2 for the 4 items).²⁹

We also assessed the relationship of grandmother and parent education, income, ethnicity and whether or not the father lived with the child to the third generation child's self-esteem. None of these relations were significant. Child gender was significantly related to self-esteem (R = –0.22; P < .01), suggesting that girls had higher self-esteem than boys. Because the latent construct with the strongest relationship to child self-esteem was parent adaptive child rearing, we explored the interaction of the third generation’s gender with this construct. Although this interaction term was not significant, gender was retained in the model. In addition, the mothers and fathers did not differ on the 2 measures of adaptive child rearing. (nonconflictual relations t = –.68, not significant; df = 147; satisfaction with the child t = –.06, not significant; df = 147). Consequently, the LISREL analysis was performed on the entire sample.

	RESULTS

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The modification indices of the maximum likelihood estimates of the model coefficients, obtained using LISREL VIII programs, with 3 exceptions, were all <4. The 3 exceptions were between 4.86 and 5.5. This indicates the adequacy of the confirmatory factor analyses. The obtained model, shown in Fig 2, had a 0.93 goodness-of-fit index (GFI), and its comparative GFI was equal to 0.96. The goodness-of-fit ² was 63.05 (df = 50). Thus, the obtained model was an adequate representation of the relationship among the grandmother and parent latent constructs and the third generation dependent variable.

View larger version (14K): [in this window] [in a new window]   FIGURE 2 The empirical pathways of the 3-generation model. GFI = 0.93; comparative GFI = 0.96. a For gender, girls are scored lower and boys are scored higher.

Therefore, with few exceptions, the hypothesized model depicted in Fig 1 was supported. There was no path from grandmother drug problems to parent drug problems, nor was there a direct path from the latter to the third generation's self-esteem. There was no direct path from parent unconventionality to the third generation's self-esteem.

The total effect analysis indicated that the effect of each of the latent constructs on the third generation's self-esteem was statistically significant: (1) for grandmother drug problems, –.15 (t = –2.71); (2) for grandmother maternal acceptance of the parent, .16 (t = 2.27); (3) for parent drug problems, –.07 (t = –2.15); (4) for parent unconventionality, –.21 (t = –3.01); and (5) for parent adaptive child rearing, .46 (t = 3.74).

To determine whether the grandmothers and parents included in the data once for each of their multiple third generation children might have increased the likelihood of our finding the empirical model, we did a posthoc analysis that included these grandmothers and parents only once, for the oldest child. Generally, the empirical model continued to be supported, but the path from grandmother maternal acceptance to parent unconventionality showed a trend but was not statistically significant.

	DISCUSSION

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The hypothesized model of the paths between the grandmother and parent variables as predictors of children's self-esteem has been supported with a few exceptions, which are noted below. This is the first study to demonstrate a relationship between grandchildren's self-esteem and grandparent attributes as mediated by parental characteristics.

This mediational model is consistent with the intergenerational transmission literature and extends it. Research has shown consistencies across generations in parenting styles, but when these consistencies have been related to third generation characteristics, the focus has been on problematic behavior rather than on positive and protective characteristics, such as self-esteem.^6,9,10 Because self-esteem is related to youth's well-being over time and protects against problem behavior, understanding its etiology in young children may serve to promote positive development.^1,2

This study also contributes to the intergenerational transmission literature by assessing a developmental model in a minority sample. Furthermore, this study includes 3 generations, each of whom reports on their own behavior and relationships, thereby minimizing the issue of reporter bias.

The link between grandmothers' maternal acceptance and parent unconventionality suggests that aspects of grandmother parenting placed their children at risk for problematic personality characteristics in adulthood.^10,11 Grandmother maternal acceptance is of importance, because it is related to both parent unconventionality and, more importantly, with parent adaptive child rearing. These 2 latent constructs (parent unconventionality and adaptive child rearing) are, in turn, related to the third generation's self-esteem. It does not seem unreasonable that, in the presence of parent adaptive child rearing, the most important of the latent constructs (see discussion of total effect analysis below), parent unconventionality does not have a direct association with children's self-esteem. Rather, this relationship is mediated by what the child experiences most immediately: parenting.

The pathway between the grandmother maternal acceptance and parent adaptive child rearing constructs confirms the intergenerational transmission of parenting found by others.^22,23 This study extends the literature by elucidating how the grandchildren's self-esteem is related to both the parents' adaptive child rearing and the grandmothers' maternal acceptance.

There are additional pathways, other than those described above, that are related to the third generation's self-esteem. This study suggests that grandmothers’ drug problems pose long-term risks for parents’ adult child rearing. Grandmothers with drug problems may have modeled poor parenting skills for the parent.^9,10,21 Parents’ drug problems also affect their child rearing, which, in turn, is linked to the third generation's self-esteem. The study, therefore, highlights the significance of drug use in 2 generations as related to self-esteem through the mediation of parent child rearing.

Lastly, the third generation girls had significantly higher self-esteem than the third generation boys. Although in an adolescent sample this would be atypical, the findings for earlier developmental periods are less consistent.¹³ If our sample was followed into adolescence, the current gender difference might not be sustained.

All 3 of the paths that did not achieve significance, grandmother drug problems to parent drug problems, parent drug problems to third generation self-esteem, and parent unconventionality to third generation self-esteem, were in the expected direction. The lack of statistical significance may be because of limited power.

The total effect analysis indicated that parent adaptive child rearing was the most important of the latent constructs; this is consistent with its proximal position in the model. Parent unconventionality is second in importance. Although the effects of the remaining constructs were all significant, their contribution was of a somewhat lower magnitude. Not surprisingly, parent influence, particularly with regard to child rearing, has a stronger relationship to the third generation's self-esteem than the parallel grandmother constructs.

A few limitations need to be considered when interpreting this study's results. First, with a larger sample we would have been able to compare the model across the ethnic and socioeconomic groups.^14,35 Moreover, we might have been able to test for differences between mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son relationships of the parent latent constructs with the third generation's self-esteem. Second, 3-generation studies like this one might benefit from including a measure of contact and/or quality of the relationship between grandmother and grandchild. Third, if the study had obtained more information about the grandmothers' drug problems, information sufficient to determine clinical levels or diagnoses, and the length of the parents' exposure to them, we might have found a link to the parents' drug problems. In addition, these data might have further clarified the relationship of the grandmothers’ drug problems to the parents’ adaptive child rearing. Fourth, we assessed the statistical association between the generations assuming one causal direction. However, children's behaviors might also affect their parents' adaptive child rearing, yielding a reciprocal relationship.³⁶

This study's results have interventional implications. The relative strength of the parent adaptive child rearing construct in our developmental model highlights its importance as a focus for therapeutic intervention. Improving grandmothers' parenting skills and preventing or intervening to reduce grandmothers' drug use may well have effects on their own behavior, their children's behavior, and the development of their grandchildren. The above suggests that multigenerational family therapy may be an effective intervention when the third generation's self-esteem is low.

	ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 
This study was supported by 3 National Institutes of Health grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse: research scientist award K05 DA00244 and research grant R01 DA05702, both awarded to Dr Brook, and research grant R01 DA12374, awarded to Dr Rosenberg.

	FOOTNOTES

 
Accepted Sep 13, 2006.

Address correspondence to Judith S. Brook, EdD, Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, 215 Lexington Ave, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10016. E-mail: judith.brook{at}med.nyu.edu

The authors have indicated they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

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This Article Abstract Full Text (PDF) P3Rs: Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when P3Rs are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to My File Cabinet Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Brook, J. S. Articles by Rosenberg, G. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Brook, J. S. Articles by Rosenberg, G. Related Collections Office Practice

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