Perceived parental sex discrimination, happiness and self-esteem: children’s perspective

Abstract

This study examines parents’ sex discrimination through the perspectives of their children and its relationship to their daughter’s happiness and self-esteem. Questionnaires were collected from 805 secondary school students at eight Chinese Independent Schools in Malaysia. The results showed that perceived parental sex discrimination (PPSD) was negatively correlated with happiness and self-esteem. Importantly, this relationship only occurred among female but not male respondents. These results suggest that significantly negative psychological impact is possible due to PPSD, and, thus, the introduction of laws to ban the abuse of the sex-selection techniques is not enough to tackle this complicated phenomenon.

Keywords:

• parental sex discrimination
• preference for sons
• happiness
• self-esteem
• Malaysia

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Wong Shwu-Huey and Chong Wei-Loong for their assistance in data collection.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Research Fund [6200/S30].