Formative Parental Competencies and Parenting Stress as Predictors of Children's Self-Esteem

Nurturing and responsive parenting, along with parental competencies that foster child development, are the foundation for healthy emotional and psychological growth, as they provide children and adolescents with a secure environment in which they feel valued, understood, and capable of coping with everyday challenges. From this perspective, the quality of family interactions plays a central role in the development of children's self-esteem.

To analyze the relationship among formative parental competencies, parental stress, and children's self-esteem.

The sample of 332 participants comprised 166 children aged 8 to 12 years and their caregivers. The E2P v.2 scale, the PSI-SF, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were administered, after obtaining consent from the parents and/or caregivers and assent from the children.

At a correlational level, formative parental competencies were negatively associated with parental stress, and positively associated with children's self-esteem, while parental stress was negatively associated with that self-esteem. When examining the relationships using structural equation modeling, formative parental competencies were associated with less stress and higher self-esteem in children, without showing a direct effect of stress on the children's self-esteem.

These findings suggest that the quality of parenting practices is associated with lower levels of parental stress and higher levels of children's self-esteem, highlighting its potential role as a protective factor. This pattern of associations may inform the design of interventions aimed at strengthening parental competencies aligned with positive parenting, without implying causal effects.