The long-term impact of parents' childbearing decisions on children's self-esteem
Open Access
- 1 November 1998
- journal article
- Published by Duke University Press in Demography
- Vol. 35 (4), 435-443
- https://doi.org/10.2307/3004012
Abstract
We examine the long-term impact of parents' childbearing decisions on children's self-esteem. We focus on subjective aspects of the home environment in the creation of children's internalized sense of self-worth. Unique 23-year family panel data combining measures of mothers' childbearing, mothers' childbearing intentions, and children's self-esteem allow us to examine the overall links between parents' childbearing and children's self-esteem. The results demonstrate that parents' childbearing intentions can have a significant long-term impact on their children's self-esteem. Children who were unintended by their mothers have significantly lower self-esteem 23 years later. Our findings indicate that giving birth to an unintended child can have a long-term negative impact on subjective aspects of the child's well-being, at least in terms of self-esteem. Unintended childbearing has received an increasing amount of research attention in recent years.Keywords
This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit:
- Parent-Child Relationships During the Transition to AdulthoodJournal of Family Issues, 1995
- Born Unwanted: Long‐Term Developmental Effects of Denied AbortionJournal of Social Issues, 1992
- Family Economic Hardship, Parental Support, and Adolescent Self-EsteemSocial Psychology Quarterly, 1991
- Gender Differences in Sources of Self-EsteemSocial Psychology Quarterly, 1991
- Marital Conflict, the Parent-Child Relationship and Child Self-EsteemFamily Relations, 1986
- The Neglected Birth Order: MiddlebornsJournal of Marriage and Family, 1982
- Self-esteem and education: Sex and cohort comparisons among high school seniors.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979
- Self-esteem in young men: A longitudinal analysis of the impact of educational and occupational attainment.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1977
- Self-esteem in young men: A longitudinal analysis of the impact of educational and occupational attainment.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1977
- Birth order effects: Not here, not now].Psychological Bulletin, 1972