Comparison of self-esteem in college students from divorced parents versus college students from intact families.

Abstract

Divorce is a nationwide problem that affects more and more families and children every day. Because these children of divorce often learn from their parents, there very likely is a greater risk for these children to become divorced themselves as adults. The question is how can we prevent this from happening? One answer is to look at the self-esteem of these children. Self-esteem refers to how an individual views him-or herself. Do these children have an overall positive or negative feeling about themselves and do they feel significant and worthwhile? This study was designed to examine self-esteem levels of college students of divorced parents versus college students of parents who are still married. ixty-eight students from a small, midwestern university volunteered to participate in this study. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory-Adult Form (SEI-A) and a demographic questionnaire were used to collect the data. Specifically, it was hypothesized that students from divorced parents would have lower self-esteem than students from parents still married. To determined significance, a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used with family structure (parents married/parents divorced) and gender (male/female) as independent variables and overall CSEI-A scores as the dependent variable. No significant differences were found between college students of divorced parents and college students with married parents. However, the interaction effect of gender and family structure approached significance with an alpha value at .069. Results suggested that males adapt better to the divorce of parents. This may be because of increased responsibility in the home after divorce. Females, on the other hand, scored much lower on self-esteem when coming from divorced families.