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
Twenge (2006) postulated that todays young adults have earned the title Generation Me. This generation has set itself apart from all other birth cohorts due to its excessive focus on the self, unrealistic optimism, and heightened anxiety and depression. Twenge argued that the self-esteem movement that was so popular in public schools during the late 1980s and 1990s could have contributed to this generations over-inflated sense of self. Twenge (2006, 2009) also pointed the finger at modern parentsthose who shower children with earned praise, protect them from others criticism, and treat them like royaltybut there is very little empirical evidence to support this view. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between parenting styles and students Generation Me characteristics. We hypothesized that perceived parental support would be positively correlated with students self esteem, entitlement, narcissism, optimism, depression and anxiety. We also hypothesized that parents reports of modern parenting would be positively correlated with these characteristics.

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

Moms Support
Self-esteem .33** Entitlement .06

Dads Support
.23** -.03

Modern Parenting
.27 -.11

The students completed an online survey that included the Parental Support subscale from the revised Child Report of Parent Behavior Inventory, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Personal Entitlement Scale, Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Life Orientation Test ( a measure of optimism), Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (a measure of depression), and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. They also completed a survey that measured the extent they match Twenges description of Generation Me (Gen Me). This survey, developed for the present study (Cronbachs = .66), included items such as My basic philosophy in life is, do whatever makes you happy and You should never give up on your dreams. We invited parents of the student participants to take an online survey. This survey included a modern parenting scale (MP) that we created for the present study (Cronbachs = .78). The scale included items such as, I wanted my child to consider me a friend and I praised my child for virtually everything she did. Most of the participants were mothers so we did not analyze data from the fathers.

Narcissism
Optimism Depression Anxiety Gen Me

.19*
.08 -.31** -.16 .27**

.20*
.09 -.17 -.22* .23**

.42**
.34* -.26 -.20 .36*

*p < .05. **p<.01.

Discussion
We found that parenting styles were significantly related to some of the characteristics attributed to todays young adults. Students who reported more support from their parents had higher self-esteem and more narcissism. They were also more characteristic of Generation Me. Parents who adopted modern parenting practices were more likely to have children who were narcissistic, optimistic, and typical of Generation Me. These findings are consistent with Twenges (2006, 2009) assertion that modern parenting is a root cause of this generations obsession with the self. However, we found that perceived parental support was negatively related to depression and anxiety (and modern parenting was unrelated to these outcomes). While there may be positive consequences of modern parenting, our results suggest that this parenting style may be producing a generation of self-focused, narcissistic individuals. Teaching our children to put themselves first, always feel good about themselves, and never give up on their dreams may not be in their best interest. It is vital that researchers continue to explore this possibility.

Results
As expected, perceived support from mothers was positively correlated with self-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 were positively correlated with narcissism (r = .42, p = .005), optimism (r= .34, p = .022) and Gen Me (r= .36, p = .016). We found negative correlations between perceived support from mothers and depression (r= -.32, p < .001) and perceived support from fathers and anxiety (r = -.22, p =.015). We conducted a series of regression analyses to further explore these relationships. The overall model predicting optimism from the three parenting variables was significant, F (3, 35) = 3.73, p = .020. Perceived support from fathers ( =.35, p = .045) and modern parenting ( = .19, p = .012) were significant predictors of optimism. The overall model for Gen Me was also significant, F(3,36) = 3.33, p = .030, but the only significant predictor was modern parenting ( = .28, p = .037).

References
Twenge, J.M. (2006). Generation Me: Why todays young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitledand more miserable than ever before. New York: Free Press. Twenge, J.M., & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age of entitlement. New York: Free Press.