A separate team is analyzing the content of four best-selling textbooks on family communication, in order to understand better the part gender plays in shaping family studies. If you don't have extremely strange behavior going in a family, such as incest, then your vision of normal is based on what you tell each other, how you define it within the family. We found that most people think their families are in the middle, not terribly wonderful or terribly strange. The influence parents have over children varies by the gender of the parent as well. Both male and female children expect that the mother will be an effective communicator and an affirmer.
Mothers seem to have a negative impact on self-esteem when they fail in that expectation.
Parents might be surprised to learn that they continue to have a significant influence on their offsprings' sense of self-worth through the college years, and even through graduate school. The manner in which they communicate is a key factor in this process. I had that trouble too in college,' then that young adult will feel affirmed. After earning a Ph.D. in 1980 from the University of Oregon, Webb taught at the University of Florida until 1990. She taught at the University of Memphis from 1991 until 1999, when she came to the University of Arkansas as a tenured professor.