Actual and perceived parental social status: effects on adolescent self-concept

Adolescence, Fall, 1995 by Emda Orr, Batia Dinur

The processes that connect adolescent growth to parental social status have been largely neglected in the literature. The present paper investigates the relation between adolescent development and two aspects of parental social status, namely, status as gleaned by objective measures and status as perceived by adolescents.

Parental Social Status and Adolescent Growth

"Social Status" is a term used by sociologists to describe the position of an individual or a group in a hierarchical social structure. This structure encompasses the features of a society (or group within a society) that have certain permanence over time, are interrelated, and largely determine or condition both the functioning of the society (or group) as a whole and the activities of its individual members. Parameters of the social structure are normative patterns, inequalities of power, and material privileges which give members of society and their children widely different opportunities and alternatives. These variables are usually measured by income, education, and occupation (Blau, 1975). Parental social status (PSS) is the term used here to denote the position of the entire family in the social structure.

Adolescents are likely to perceive the structure of their society, and of their parents' position in it (Demo & Savin-Williams, 1983; Rosenberg & Pearlin, 1978), however, perceived parental social status (PEPSS) is not mere knowledge of the position of one's family in society. It also consists of adolescents' impressions of how influential, respected, and socially involved their parents are in their immediate community. Their perception of parental status, therefore, consists of the parents' status in both the wider and narrower boundaries of their society.

One way to measure adolescent growth is through the level of the self-concept, which indicates how worthy individuals believe they are. This level has been found to be stable, and to affect such growth parameters as behavioral adjustment, emotional well-being (Bandura, 1978; Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Eccles, Adler, & Meece, 1984; Epstein, 1973; Sullivan, 1953), school achievement (Assor & Connell, 1991; Marsh, 1990), social involvement (Rosenberg, 1991) and cognitive functioning (Markus, 1977). Notwithstanding the consensus that self-concept reflects growth, there is little agreement regarding terminology and content. Social scientists refer to self-regard (Wylie, 1968), self-image (Rosenberg, 1991), self-esteem (Harter, 1983), and self-perceptions, as well as to self-concept (Marsh, 1990). Moreover, self-concept has been measured by a context-free global parameter in some studies (e.g., Rosenberg, 1991), by a combined measure of several domain-specific scales in others (e.g., Piers & Harris, 1969), and by domain-specific self-concept scales in still others (e.g., Marsh 1990; see also Harter, 1983, and Wylie, 1979, for reviews). The present study conceives of self-concept as an internal, hierarchically organized, multidimensional system, consisting of a number of distinct domain-specific self-concepts, with self-esteem as a context-free global self-appraisal at the apex.

Specific self-concepts are based in part on perceived self-interactions with distinct social systems, such as school and peer groups, which are conceived as self-concepts in the academic and social domain, respectively. This paradigm provides the researcher with two kinds of information: the level of self-appraisals, i.e., the group means of the components of the self-concept, and more important for our goal, information about the organization of the self-concept, i.e., the network of correlations between PSS and PEPSS and domain-specific self-concepts. Information about the levels of domain-specific self-concepts equips the researcher with the means for analyzing the adolescent's level of growth. The organization of the self-concept reveals whether, to what extent, and how a person is affected by the social structure.

Rosenberg and Pearlin's Four-process Theory

While social status is one of the most important concepts in sociology (Blau, 1975) and self-concept is a central concept in psychology (see Harter, 1983, for review), only a small number of social scientists have investigated how the two concepts are related in children. In contrast to their counterparts during the sixties and the seventies (see Hess, 1970, for review), developmental psychologists in the last decade tend to consider social status as "noise," something one has to control for in order to get "clean" results. Investigations about the specific processes by which social status is related to self-concept are negligible (Bronfenbrenner, 1989).

Rosenberg and Pearlin (1978) provide a notable exception to this trend, suggesting a four-process theory of how social status affects the self-esteem of adults and children. First, self-esteem is determined in part by comparisons with others in the immediate environment. Children are likely to encounter other children from similar backgrounds, while adults, especially in the work place, are likely to interact not only with similar others but with persons of higher or lower social status. Consequently, comparisons with others are likely to be shaped by social status in adults, but not in children. Second, self-esteem is determined in part by appraisal of others, and individuals tend to perceive these appraisals as part of their self-esteem. Since adults (as opposed to children) are likely to be at least partly appraised according to their social status, they tend to appraise themselves along a status scale. Third, self-esteem is determined in part by the perception of one's own achievement. In Western societies, social status is partly perceived as an individual achievement. In contrast, the social status of children is ascribed and therefore less likely to affect this self-esteem. Finally, domains which are important to the individual are likely to influence self-esteem, while unimportant domains are not. Social status is an important domain in the eyes of adults, but much less in those of children. Hence, Rosenberg and Pearlin (1978) conclude that the self-esteem of children and adults is determined by the same processes, but since their developmental and social conditions are different, social status is likely to affect the self-esteem of adults, while parental social status is less likely to affect the self-esteem of children.