How parents guide, support and set boundaries for adolescents may be closely related to how young people see themselves, according to new peer-reviewed research involving 416 adolescents and their parents in Türkiye.
The study found that authoritative parenting, a style generally characterised by warmth, responsiveness and clear expectations, was positively and significantly associated with adolescents’ overall self-perception. The relationship also extended across general, physical, academic, social and family-related dimensions of self-perception.
The findings add to evidence that parenting practices are associated with adolescent psychological development. However, the researchers used a correlational design, so the results cannot establish that authoritative parenting directly causes stronger self-perception.
Adolescence is a critical period for self-perception
Adolescence involves substantial physical, cognitive, emotional and social change. During this period, young people increasingly form judgments about their abilities, appearance, relationships, academic competence and place within their families.
Self-perception is therefore not a single judgment. It can reflect several domains of a young person’s developing identity, including how they evaluate themselves generally and how they perceive their physical, academic, social and family functioning.
Researchers Alev Üstündağ and Nurgül Geldi examined whether parents’ child-rearing attitudes were related to these dimensions of adolescent self-perception. Their study was published in Scientific Reports on 25 September 2026.
How the study was conducted
The researchers used a quantitative correlational design and collected data between January and June 2025 across four secondary schools in Ankara, Türkiye.
The final study involved 416 volunteer adolescents and their respective parents. This paired design allowed the researchers to examine information about parenting attitudes alongside measures of adolescents’ self-perception rather than relying on a single outcome alone.
Data were collected using personal information forms, the Parent Attitude Scales Form C and the Self-Perception Scale for Adolescents. The researchers analysed the data using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis and multiple linear regression.
The regression analyses were particularly important because they allowed the researchers to assess the statistical relationship between parenting style and adolescent self-perception across several domains. The study remained observational, however, meaning the models identify associations rather than experimental effects.
Authoritative parenting was the predominant style
Among the participating families, parents predominantly exhibited an authoritative parenting style. In developmental research, authoritative parenting is generally distinguished from authoritarian or permissive approaches by combining clear expectations and behavioural guidance with responsiveness and support.
The adolescents in the sample also showed high overall levels of self-perception. The researchers reported that family self-perception was particularly high, indicating that participants tended to evaluate themselves positively within the family domain.
These descriptive findings provide context for the regression results. The study was not comparing a population dominated by one clearly adverse parenting environment with another dominated by a clearly positive one. Instead, it examined variation in parenting attitudes and self-perception within a school-based sample in which authoritative parenting was already the most common pattern.
Positive association extended across five areas of self-perception
The central finding was that authoritative parenting showed a statistically significant positive relationship with adolescents’ self-perception.
The association was not confined to the overall score. Regression analyses indicated statistically significant relationships with general, physical, academic, social and familial self-perception. In other words, higher authoritative parenting scores were associated with more positive adolescent self-evaluations across multiple parts of everyday life.
This breadth is noteworthy because adolescent self-perception can vary substantially by domain. A young person may, for example, feel academically capable while being less confident socially or physically. The findings suggest that the parenting relationship measured in this study was relevant across several of these dimensions rather than only one narrow area.
Statistical significance does not indicate that parenting style explains all, or even most, differences in adolescent self-perception. Personality, peers, school experiences, socioeconomic circumstances, physical development, culture and many other influences can also shape how adolescents view themselves.
Why authoritative parenting may be relevant
The findings are consistent with the idea that adolescents may benefit from environments that combine structure with emotional responsiveness. Clear expectations can provide predictability, while support and communication may give adolescents space to develop competence and autonomy.
For academic self-perception, this could involve parents setting expectations while still allowing adolescents to develop confidence in their own abilities. In the social and family domains, responsive communication may contribute to a sense of belonging and personal value. These are plausible interpretations, but the present study did not experimentally test the psychological mechanisms that would explain the associations.
The results should therefore be understood as evidence of a relationship between measured parenting attitudes and measured self-perception, not as proof of a simple one-directional pathway from a parenting style to a particular adolescent outcome.
The relationship may work in more than one direction
One challenge in parenting research is that parents influence children while children also influence parents. An adolescent who communicates openly, performs confidently at school or responds well to boundaries may affect how a parent behaves. Likewise, a parent who combines support with consistent expectations may influence how an adolescent responds and develops.
Because the current study was correlational, it cannot separate these possibilities. Longitudinal research following families across several years would be better suited to examining whether changes in parenting attitudes precede changes in adolescent self-perception, whether the reverse occurs, or whether both processes operate together.
Potential implications for families and schools
The study may have practical relevance for parent education and adolescent support programmes. Rather than focusing only on control or only on freedom, programmes could examine how parents communicate expectations, respond to adolescents’ needs and support growing independence.
Schools may also have a role because adolescents’ self-perception develops across family, academic and peer environments. Family-focused guidance could complement school-based approaches designed to strengthen social confidence, academic engagement and healthy self-evaluation.
These implications should not be interpreted as a clinical prescription. The study did not test a parenting intervention, and it did not show that asking parents to adopt a particular set of behaviours would necessarily produce measurable improvements in adolescents’ self-perception.
Important limitations
The first limitation is the correlational research design. Although regression can estimate statistical relationships between variables, it cannot establish causality. Unmeasured factors may partly explain the observed associations.
Second, the sample consisted of 416 adolescents and their parents recruited from four secondary schools in Ankara. Parenting practices and interpretations of desirable parent-child relationships are influenced by culture and social context. The findings should therefore not automatically be generalised to adolescents in other regions or countries.
Third, the research relied on scale-based measurements of parenting attitudes and self-perception. Such instruments are useful for comparing participants systematically, but they cannot capture every aspect of family interaction or adolescent identity.
Finally, self-perception is not equivalent to objective academic performance, mental health status or long-term developmental outcomes. A positive self-view can be important, but the study did not establish that the parenting patterns measured here improve later educational, social or health outcomes.
What the study adds
The research contributes contemporary evidence from Türkiye using data from 416 adolescent-parent pairs. Its key contribution is the finding that authoritative parenting was positively associated not only with overall adolescent self-perception but also with general, physical, academic, social and familial dimensions.
The findings support further longitudinal and intervention research into how specific parental behaviours, communication patterns and boundary-setting practices relate to adolescent development over time. Future work could also examine whether the associations differ according to age, gender, socioeconomic circumstances or cultural context.
For now, the study provides evidence that the way parents combine guidance and responsiveness is meaningfully related to how adolescents perceive themselves across several important areas of life.
Source Information
Study: The relationship between parents’ child-rearing attitudes and adolescents’ self-perception
Authors: Alev Üstündağ and Nurgül Geldi
Journal: Scientific Reports
Published: 25 September 2026
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-73238-8
Study design: Quantitative correlational study
Sample: 416 volunteer adolescents and their respective parents from four secondary schools in Ankara, Türkiye
