Association of Family Challenges with Self-esteem and Perceived Social Support among Indian Adolescents
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Association of Family Challenges with Self-esteem and Perceived Social Support among Indian Adolescents Parvathy Valsala1 · Sriram Devanathan2 · Suja M. Kuttappan3
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract The family micro-system is important in the development of any individual. Defects or deviations in its normative functioning affect the development of a child. These defects may include child maltreatment or abuse, be it physical, sexual, emotional, or neglect. Within this domain, in our view, there does not appear to be adequate development related to the understanding of, and intervention for, emotional abuse. Emotional abuse extends from explicit acts to invisible causative factors of neglect or humiliation. In this work, through quantitative and qualitative empirical evidence, we have attempted to associate family challenges with self-esteem (SE) and perceived social support. The study was carried out on a sample of early-adolescent high school students in the state of Kerala, India. We found a significant difference in SE between adolescents who reported challenges at home and those who did not. We also observed the limited role of age as a determinant in this differentiation. The current work serves to significantly supplement the understanding of causal relationships in the discourse on emotional abuse in the context of child development. Keywords Family · Psychological maltreatment · Emotional abuse · Self-esteem · Perceived social support · Indian adolescents Bronfenbrenner (1994), in his ecological systems theory, emphasized the role of family environment in the development of a child, by representing the immediate family home as the microsystem. Consequently, challenges in the family microsystem, such as breaks in continuum of care, physical or emotional abuse, and interpersonal conflicts, are seen to influence the development of a child. In this context, the family stress model (Conger et al., 1992; Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010) reports that stresses related to family finance affect spousal harmony, causing family dysfunction, which results in adolescent maladjustments. * Sriram Devanathan [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Social Work, Amrita School of Arts & Sciences, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, India
2
Center of Excellence in Advanced Materials & Green Technologies (COE ‑ AMGT), Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India
3
Department of Social Work, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India
Moving now to the effect of family stresses, Belsky (1980), reporting on the ecological integration of child maltreatment, represented child mistreatment as a sociopsychological phenomenon. This phenomenon was stated to be determined by the family-system influences: microand macro-systems as well as individual ontogenic systems. The study tried to underline the interaction between family micro-system
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