Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 327 – 331

3rd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance (WCPCG-2012)

Mother-daughter Relationshi steem
Selin Onayli *, Ozgur Erdur-Baker
Middle East Technical University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the relation of mother daughter relationship to self-esteem of the adult daughters. The
sample was consisting of 426 female university students with a mean age of 21.62 (SD= 2.35). The Mother-Adult Daughter
Questionnaire (MAD) (Rastogi, 1995), and The Rosenberg Self- Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) were used to gather data.
Multiple regression analysis was conducted to evaluate how well the three dimensions of mother daughter relationship
(connectedness, interdependency and trust in hierarchy) predicted the self-esteem of the daughters. The results show that
connectedness positively and interdependency negatively correlated to self-esteem of the daughters.
© 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
© 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer review under the responsibility of Dr. Melehat Halat
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu & Dr. Mukaddes Demirok, Near East University, Cyprus
Keywords: Mother-daughter relationship, self-esteem

1. Introduction

Parent-child relationship and its effects on the child have been intriguing researchers because parents have an
important place in human life. In a family life, the mother as a main caregiver has a more important role than the
father in bringing up childre
styles to the mothers found to be predicting the quality of future relationships by Bowlby (1988), and Fischer (1991)
observed that interdependence and emotional connection were higher in mother and daughter relationship than any
other dyads. Therefore, the nature of the mother and daughter relationship carries a determining role in the life of the
daughters in their social and psychological well-beings and self-esteem.
Self-
worthwhile, and successful they are as a person (Joseph, 1994; Rosenberg, 1965). Joseph (1994) suggests that
individuals with higher self-esteem tend to believe that they are worthy of love and support, and they can set and
accomplish goals more easily than others. Some studies have displayed that mother plays the crucial role in the
-esteem (Greene, 1990a, b; Thornton, Chatters, Taylor, & Allen, 1990).
Moreover, Sholomskas and Axelrod (1986) claim that when the mother supports and shows interest in the
develops a higher psychological well-being. Daughters who have insecure bonds with
their mothers in the period of infancy are more likely to have psychological problems and less functioning such as
reactive attachment disorder, personality problems, and interpersonal relationship problems especially in the later
adulthood (Klockars & Sirola, 2001). Therefore; the quality of mother and daughter relationship plays important
roles in the development of self-esteem (Douglass, 2005). However, very few studies examined how the mother -

Corresponding author name:* -312-284-7178

-
E mail address: e151054@metu.edu.tr

1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu & Dr. Mukaddes Demirok, Near East University, Cyprus
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.560
328 Selin Onayli and Ozgur Erdur-Baker / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 327 – 331

daughter relationship related to self-esteem of an adult daughter. These few studies showed that the level of self
esteem of adult daughter has close connection with the nature of the mother - daughter relationship (Baruch &
Barnett, 1983). Yet these studies ignored that mother-daughter relationships may have different dimensions which
were suggested by researchers. Rastogi (2002) defined three dimensions in mother-daughter relationship as
connectedness means, the ability to share their feelings and ideas and represents an affective attachment to the
relationship. Interdependency means the advice taking behavior and help-seeking in emotional and practical issues
and at the same time feeling free to make their own decisions both for mothers and daughters. Trust in the hierarchy
represents presumption that older women know the best about their daughters. The studies showed that the maternal
connectedness has a relation with reduced risk behaviors (e.g. Aronowitz & Morisson-Beedy, 2004) and is
preventing the youth from becoming smokers (e.g. Tilson, McBride, Lipkus, & Catalano, 2004).
Very few studies investigated the link between mother-daughter relationships and adult daughter self-esteem
with regard to different dimensions of mother-daughter relationships which is the case in Turkish culture as well.
The strength of mother daughter relationship is very critical and obvious in every culture, yet the child rearing
practices, the nature of family functioning may differ from culture to culture. Therefore, this study aims to
-esteem related to mother-daughter relationship with its three dimensions of
connectedness, interdependency, and trust in the hierarchy in Turkish culture.

2. Method

2.1. Participants and Data Collection Procedure

In the present study, data was gathered from female university students. Participants were recruited by using a
convenience sampling procedure. The participants were 426 female students. The average age of the participants
was 21.62 (SD=2.35) ranging from 18 to 36. After Human Subjects Ethics Committee was approved the research,
the purpose of the study was explained and the instruments were administered to the voluntary participants in their
class hours. The administration was taken approximately 10 minutes.

2.2. Data Collection Instruments

2.2.1. Demographic Information Form.

This form inquired the demographic information such as age of the participants, their current levels of education,
the status of their mothers (whether they are alive or not).

2.2.2. Mother and Adult Daughter (MAD) Questionnaire

The Mother and Adult Daughter Questionnaire has been developed by Rastogi (1995) to measure various
aspects of the current mother daughter relationships. The instrument consists of 25 items and 3 subscales. Eight of
them are multiple choices, 17 of them are 5 point Likert-type scale. Nine items have been aimed to measure the
connectedness, 3 items to measure the interdependence, and 6 items to measure the trust in the hierarchy. Other 7
items are not the parts of the subscales but they provide helpful information about the relationship between mothers
was found as
.87. The value of Cronbach's alpha for interdependency was .74. Finally, the Cronb
trust in hierarchy -
and the structure with 2 factors has been reported. However, the three factor structure were tested again with a larger
sample and there was not a big difference between 2 factors and 3 factors structures; therefore, using the original
factor structure with 3 factors has been chosen (for details see, dity studies of
MAD Questionnaire have found a satisfactory level of reliability and validity.
 Selin Onayli and Ozgur Erdur-Baker / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 327 – 331 329

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale which has been developed by Morris Rosenberg (1965). It is a widely-used
global self-esteem measure with a 10-item Likert-type scale with items on a four point scale-ranging from strongly
agree (4) to strongly disagree (1). It consists of 10 statements related to overall feelings of self-worth, self-approval
and, confidence. Higher scores are related to higher self-esteem. The reliability and validity of Rosenberg Self
Esteem Scale has been tested in other studies, as well and it has satisfactory level of reliability and validity. The
translation of the self-esteem scale in Turkish and reliability and validity studies ha
(1986
was found 87.

2.3. Data Analysis Procedure

To begin with, the data was controlled erroneous and missing entries and descriptive statistics were checked.
Before conducting the main analysis, missing value analysis (MVA) and expectation maximation (EM) were used to
handle the missing data in the questionnaire. After that the descriptive statistics was utilized to examine the
characteristics of the sample and the variables of the study. The correlation coefficients among the variables were
also examined. The last step of the analysis was the utilization of the multiple regression analysis to examine the
-adult daughter relationship (connectedness,
interdependency and trust in hi self-
regression analysis was conducted by using SPSS 15.
Prior to the analyses of data, assumptions for the multiple regression analysis that stated by Tabachnick and
Fidell, (2007) (sample size, normally distributed errors, homoscedasticity, independent errors, linearity,
multicollinearity, influential observations) were checked. A significance level of 0.05 was established.

3. Result

First of all descriptive characteristics of data were investigated. According to these results, mean of
connectedness, interdependency, trust in hierarchy and self-esteem were 37.80 (SD= 5.43); 11.70 (SD= 2.56); 19.88
(SD= 4.79) and 28.46 (SD= 4.23) respectively.
A simultaneous multiple regression analysis was utilized to assess how well the three dimensions of
(connectedness, interdependency, and trust in hierarchy) mother-daughter relationship predicted the self-esteem of
the daughters. In this analysis, all predictor variables were entered at one step. In the analysis self-esteem was
treated as criterion variable. The results indicated that the multiple regression coefficient was significant (R=.29,
p<.00) for the model. In other words, the linear combination of predictor variables was significantly related to the
self-esteem scores of participants F (3, 422) = 12.6, p<.00.
The combination of the variables explained 8% of the variance in self-esteem (R . 08; Adjusted R . 08).
Furthermore, the results of the standardized coefficients indicated that connectedness positively predicted self-
esteem ( .41, t= 5.95, p<.05). In addition to that interdependency negatively predicted self-esteem ( -.20, t=-
2.39, p<.05). Hence, as the connectedness levels of the participants increased, their self-esteem level also increases
significantly. On the other hand, results revealed that trust in the hierarchy was not a significant predictor of self-
esteem of the participants.

4. Discussion

All the three dimensions of mother-adult daughter relationship were tested to see if they were correlated to the
self- -esteem.
The parental connectedness has an importance in decreasing the risk of negative psychological and behavioral
outcomes on adolescents and increasing power of the girls (Grotevant & Cooper, 1998). Moreover, a study of
Aronowitz and Morisson-Beedy (2004) shows young adolescent African-American girls have more resilience if
330 Selin Onayli and Ozgur Erdur-Baker / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 327 – 331

their maternal connectedness is high when the future time perspective is a mediator. These studies were with
-esteem.
The interdependency contains intimacy and aid to give each other (Rastogi, 1995) and feeling attachment
(Thompson & Walker, 1984). In a study by Thompson and Walker (1984), older women note more attachment and
young women who reported more attachment are d that
interdependency was negatively correlated with self-esteem. That is, daughters who had a higher interdependency in
their relationship with their mothers, had lower self-esteem. This finding was unexpected and the data lacking such
result is unfortunate. The future research may be helpful to explain such relationship but one suspect that university
students as young adults, presume less attachment but more independency.
According to results; no relationship was present between the trust in the hierarchy and self-esteem of the
daughters. The hierarchy in the mother-daughter relationship changes over different cultures (Rastogi, 1995). Buriel
(1993) found that the hierarchy is different between generations; Ex-generations lived in more control; however, the
last generations are more autonomous. In the present study the trust in the hierarchy does not a predictor of self-
esteem.
In conclusion, different dimensions of the mother-daughter relationships have varying associations with adult
-esteem. Such result provides further evidences for the importance of the relationship between
mothers and their daughters. The present study has several limitations. The convenient sampling method limited the
generalizability of the results. In addition, self-report measures may lead to social desirability problems and might
affect the results. Therefore, the results of the study need to be cross-validated by utilizing larger and more diverse
samples.

References

Anne . Unpublished Doctorate Thesis, Ankara

University, Ankara.
Aronowitz, T., & Morrison-Beedy, D. (2004). Resilience in impoverished African American girls: The role of mother-daughter connectedness.
Research in Nursing and Health, 29, 19-29.
Baruch, G., & Barnett, R. C. (1983). Adult daughters' relationships with their mothers. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45, 601-606.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books, (Chapter 7).
Buriel, R. (1993). Childrearing orientations in Mexican American families: The influence of generation and sociocultural factors. Journal of
Marriage and the Family, 55, 987-1000.
). Adole . Unpublished Master Thesis, Hacettepe University, Ankara.
Douglass, M. J. (2005). An exploration of the relationship between the perception of mother-daughter relationship, feminist consciousness and
self-esteem in the adolescent/ young adult daughter. Doctoral Dissertation, The College of William and Mary, Virginia.
Fischer, L. R. (1991). Between mothers and daughters. Marriage and Family Review, 16, 237-248.
Greene, B. A. (1990a). What has gone before: The legacy of racism and sexism in the lives of Black mothers and daughters. Women and
Therapy, 9, 207 230.
Greene, B. A. (1990b). Sturdy bridges: The role of African American mothers in the socialization of African American children. Women and
Therapy, 10, 205 225.
Grotevant, H., & Cooper, C. R. (1998). Individuality and connectedness in adolescent development: Review and prospects for research on
identity, relationships and context. In E. Skoe, & A. V. D. Lippe (Eds.), Personality development in Adolescence: A cross national and life
span perspective (pp. 3-37). London: Routledge
Joseph, J. M. (1994). New York: Plenum Press, (Chapter 1).
Klockars, L., & Sirola, R. (2001). The mother-daughter love affair across the generations. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 56, 219-37.
z, -Adult Daughter Questionnaire. Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 5, 1516-1520.
The Relation Between Mother- -Being. Unpublished Master Thesis, Middle East
Technical University, Ankara.
Rastogi, M. (1995). Adult daughters' perception of the mother-daughter relationship: A cross-cultural comparison. Unpublished Doctoral
Dissertation, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.
Rastogi, M. (2002). The Mother-Adult Daughter Questionnaire (MAD): Developing a culturally sensitive instrument. The Family Journal:
Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 10, 145-155.
Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, (Chapter 1).
 Selin Onayli and Ozgur Erdur-Baker / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 327 – 331 331

Sholomskas, D., & Axelrod, R. (1986). The influence of mother-daughter relationships on women's sense of self and current role choices.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 10, 171-182.
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007). Using Multivariate Statistics (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Company, (Chapter 5).
Thornton, M. C., Chatters, L. M., Taylor, R. J., & Allen, W. R. (1990). Sociodemographic and environmental correlates of racial socialization by
Black parents. Child Development, 61, 401 409.
Thompson, L., & Walker, A. J. (1984). Mothers and daughters: Aid patterns and attachment. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 46, 313-322.
Tilson, E. C., McBride, C. M., Lipkus, I. M., & Catalano, R. F. (2004). Testing the interaction between parent child relationship factors and
parent smoking to predict youth smoking. Journal of Adolescent Health, 35, 182-189.