Parental Emotional Support, Science Self‐Efficacy, and Choice of Science Major in Undergraduate Women

Former participants in a high school enrichment program for girls interested in science careers were surveyed 1 to 2 years after high school graduation. After reporting their college major, they completed measures of science self-efficacy and quality of emotional bonds with parents. Of the 41 women, 5 were not enrolled in college. Those actually majoring in science (n = 23) reported significantly higher science self-efficacy than those who were undecided or had chosen nonscience majors (n = 13). Science self-efficacy was significantly negatively associated with recollections of fathers as having been highly controlling and likely to use a "love withdrawal" parenting style. In U.S. colleges and universities, women constitute only 37% of physical science majors and 18% of engineering majors and earn only about 12% of all doctoral degrees in engineering (U.S. Department of Education, 2000, 2001). These data underscore a serious national problem. The potential contribution to engineering and physical sciences of women, who make up more than half the U.S. population, remains largely untapped (National Science Foundation [NSF], 1990). Research suggests that girls and women are discouraged from choosing a career in science or engineering (as well as from choosing other nontraditional careers) by a range of psychosocial factors that include occupational sex role stereotypes, doubts about the feasibility of combining family and a science career, lack of positive female role models, low social support, stage of feminist identity, and lack of information about careers in science and technology (Betz, 2001; Fitzgerald & Harmon, 2001; Flores & O'Brien, 2001; Luzzo & McWhirter, 2001). The level of women's career aspirations also tends to decrease as they grow older (O'Brien, Friedman, Tipton, & Linn, 2000), perhaps because of the increasing salience of the barriers described above. The central thesis of this study was that the influence of parents constitutes a powerful factor in the balance of these forces that encourage or discourage girls from pursuing careers in engineering or science. Two theories lead to somewhat contradictory predictions about the nature of this parental influence: attachment theory and Roe's (Roe, 1957; Roe & Siegelman, 1964) theory of career development. Roe maintained that persons are drawn to "people-oriented" careers because of early experiences of being raised in a warm, loving, nurturing family (Roe, 1957; Roe & Siegelman, 1964). Conversely, individuals who are drawn to careers in the hard sciences tend to come from an emotionally colder home environment. In terms of research support for Roe's model, Green and Parker (1965) found that boys who perceived either parent as supportive and warm did tend to choose person-oriented occupations, whereas girls who reported cold parental relationships tended to choose careers with low person-orientation. However, many other studies have failed to confirm Roe's predictions. For example, although Roe and Siegelman found a significant relationship between nurturance/love in childhood and person-orientation in a sample of college students, the same study compared a sample of engineers with social workers and found that the social workers reported significantly more stress and less affection in their families than did the engineers. During the last 20 years, the number of studies explicitly testing Roe's model has sharply declined. In contrast, over the past 15 years, there has been an upsurge in research using attachment theory to gain a better understanding of healthy adult development (for reviews, see Lopez & Brennan, 2000; Mallinckrodt, 2000). According to Bowlby's (1988) theory, caregivers who respond with relative consistency and warmth to a young child's needs foster a sense of a "secure base" that permits the child to regulate anxiety while exploring novel surroundings. Recent applications of attachment theory to the realm of career development predict that the emotional warmth and parental responsiveness that promote a sense of a secure base for exploration in young children may also be important for encouraging adolescent girls to explore the full range of career options (Blustein, Prezioso, & Schultheiss, 1995). …