Parental practices, self-esteem and adult temperament: 17-year follow-up study of four population-based age cohorts

Abstract

Cloninger's model of harm avoidance (HA), reward dependence (RD), novelty seeking (NS) and persistence (PS) is a recent theory on temperament. We examined whether individuals' temperament in adulthood could be predicted from their self-esteem and the child-rearing practices of their mothers. Longitudinal data were collected from population-based randomized cohorts aged 6, 9, 12 and 15 years at the baseline (total n=1461). Mothers responded to a questionnaire on rearing practices at baseline. Responses to a questionnaire of self-esteem and Cloninger's temperament inventory were collected from the subjects 6 and 17 years after the baseline, respectively. Hostile maternal rearing practices increased the likelihood of low self-esteem. Low self-esteem, in turn, was associated with high HA and low RD. No direct associations between rearing practices and temperament dimensions were found except that between hostile mothering and high NS in two older male cohorts.