L. RUNDELL ET AL.
Discussion
The purpose of our study was to determine if, among young
women specifically, perceived parental rejection is associated,
via negative self-esteem, with the drinking motives identified
by Cooper and colleagues (1992): coping, enhancement, and
sociability. Our study included negative self-esteem, one of the
dispositions of the acceptance-rejection syndrome, because of
its documented link with young women’s alcohol use (Boyd et
al., 2002).
The results indicate that, among participants who perceived
stronger maternal rejection, a stronger expression of negative
self-esteem existed, which contributed to a stronger motivation
for alcohol use as a coping method. The same held true for
paternal rejection: Among participants who perceived stronger
paternal rejection, a stronger expression of negative self-esteem
existed, which contributed to a stronger motivation for alcohol
use as a coping method. This suggests that young women may
choose to drink alcohol, in part, as a way to cope with their low
self-esteem, which could be an effect, in part, of having ex-
perienced maternal and/or paternal rejection.
Neither perceived maternal nor paternal rejection had an in-
direct effect on enhancement or sociability motives. The find-
ing that perceived maternal and paternal rejection had an indi-
rect effect on only the coping motive makes sense in light of
PARTheory’s coping subtheory. Although the least well-de-
veloped portion of PARTheory, the purpose of coping subthe-
ory is to explore how some children and adults can cope with
perceived rejection better than others (Rohner et al., 2011). The
subtheory explains that there are affective copers, whose mental
health remains relatively good despite their perceived rejection,
and instrumental copers, who maintain success in task-oriented
activities like work or school but have impaired emotional and
mental health. From this, it is apparent that there are degrees of
success in coping and, presumably, many paths by which to
reach a state of coping, with some being healthier than others.
This study provides evidence that one way in which people
might cope with perceived parental rejection is via an unhealthy
path of drinking alcohol.
The limitations to this study include a racially homogenous
sample. Further, alcohol is a commonly used substance among
young adults (Dawson, Grant, Stinson, & Chou, 2004), perhaps
making the results of this study less generalizable to older
women. In addition, the present study is correlational, which
precludes the ability to make any determinations of causality.
In the future, researchers might consider examining the role
of perceived parental rejection in women’s motivations to use
substances other than alcohol. Further, researchers might also
examine if additional dispositions of the parental acceptance-
rejection syndrome (e.g., negative worldview) connect young
women’s perceptions of parental rejection to their motivations
for alcohol and other substance use. It is also important to note
that although the R2 values for Model One (.16) and Model
Two (.14) were significant, there is still unexplained variance in
the coping motive that was not accounted for by perceived ma-
ternal and paternal rejection, which invites an explanation from
future research.
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