Examining the effects of parental rearing styles on first-year university students’ audience-facing apprehension and exploring self-esteem as the mediator

The term ‘audience-facing apprehension’ (AFA) was coined by Chinese psychologists to describe an issue faced by Chinese university students wherein they experience worry, tension, anxiety, or fear when facing more than two listeners or spectators. This study attempted to explore the specific correlation between positive and negative parenting styles and first-year university students’ AFA specifically by identifying the mediating factor (i.e. self-esteem) influencing this relationship. A sample of 1060 first-year university students (Mage = 19.43, SD = 1.06) was recruited from universities in southwest China who completed questionnaires measuring AFA, parenting style, and self-esteem. Structural equation model results confirmed that (1) parental care(such as emotional warmth), an aspect of positive parenting, is significantly and negatively correlated to the students’ AFA; (2) parental control (such as rejection and overp rotection), an aspect of negative parenting, is significantly and positively correlated to the students’ AFA; and (3) self-esteem is a significant mediator in the relationship between parental styles and AFA. Thus, this study confirmed that parenting style and self-esteem level were important factors of university students’ AFA and further revealed that parenting style is not only directly related to the students’ AFA, but is also indirectly related to AFA through self-esteem. This implies that aspects of positive parenting, such as emotional warmth, will help to improve freshmen’s self-esteem, which will in turn reduce their AFA. Conversely, aspects of negative parenting, such as rejection and overprotection, will reduce freshmen’s self-esteem, which will in turn significantly increase their AFA.