Family origins of adolescent self-criticism and its continuity into adulthood.

Abstract

We used a prospective longitudinal design to examine the relation between parenting experiences at age 5 and level of self-criticism at age 12 and the stability of self-criticism from age 12 to age 31 in 156 subjects. The results showed that mothers' reports of parenting behaviors that reflect restrictiveness and rejection were related to the development of self-criticism, particularly when received from the same-sex parent. Partial correlational analyses revealed that the parenting-self-criticism relations remained significant when the mother's report of the child's early temperament was statistically controlled. The results also showed that for women, self-criticism was very stable from early adolescence to young adulthood. By contrast, there was no relation between self-criticism at ages 12 and 31 for men; however, there was a strong relation for men between age 12 self-criticism and inhibited aggressive impulses at age 31.