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In order to investigate the relationship between aspects of child rearing and adolescent self-concept, 130 males and females in grades 7, 8, and 9 completed Schaefer's Children's Report of Parental BehaviorInventory (CRPBI) and Coopersmith's Self-Esteem Inventory. Correlations between the Acceptance/Rejection dimension of the CRPBI and the various self-esteem subscores were positive. Correlations between the self-esteem scores and the Psychological Autonomy/Psychological Control dimension of the CRPBI were negative. The correlations were stronger for perceptions of mothers' as opposed to fathers' child-rearing practices. Analyses of variance indicated that ninth-graders perceived their parents as less accepting than seventhor eighth-graders. High self-esteem adolescents perceived their parents as more accepting, as using less psychological control, and as not being overly firm in making and enforcing rules and regulating the adolescents' behavior. The results support the contention that optimal self-concept development takes place in an atmosphere of acceptance that allows the adolescent autonomy and the opportunity to learn competencies.

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Male and female college students were subjects in a study done to clarify a current controversy in the literature on androgyny: whether the higher levels of self-esteem and self-concept of androgynous individuals are due to an integration of both masculine and feminine traits or due only to a high level of masculinity. Subjects completed the Bern Sex-Role Inventory and a semantic differential scale previously shown to assess four dimensions of the self-concept. The androgynous group scored higher than the undifferentiated group on adjustment, a measure of perceived homeostatic balance with the environment. The androgynous and masculine groups scored higher than the feminine and undifferentiated groups on achievement/leadership, which tends to reflect an instrumental role. Androgynous and feminine subjects scored higher than masculine and undifferentiated subjects on congeniality/sociability, which reflects an expressive role. The masculine and feminine groups scored at appropriate ends of the masculinity/femininity self-concept dimension, with the androgynous and undifferentiated groups at intermediate levels. The results are interpreted as supporting Bern's theory of androgynous flexibility. The utility of using multidimensional measures of personality is discussed.