Analysis Of You Are Such A Disappointment

“You Are Such a Disappointment!”: Negative Emotions and

Parents’ Perceptions of Adult Children’s Lack of Success.

Jay Patel

University of North Texas

“You Are Such a Disappointment!”: Negative Emotions and

Parents’ Perceptions of Adult Children’s Lack of Success.

The article attempts to educate people on parents’ perception of the success of their adult children. It discusses the emotions of mothers’ of adult children compared to their fathers’. The study shows how parents react to successful and non-successful children. In this article, success is based off of relationships and career status of the children.

Purpose of Study

Authors’ objective – The parents’ perception of the children’s lack of success may be linked with four discrete emotions: disappointment, worry, anger and guilt.

Hypotheses – A mother’s perception of her child’s poor success rate can be only associated with worry and disappointment, however, all four emotions are triggered when it comes to the father’s perception.

The study took place in order to

The t tests also showed no differences between fathers’ and mothers’ rating of guilt, anger, disappointment or worry. The correlations between the four emotions were examined separately for fathers and mothers. The range was from .23 (for guilt and worry in mothers) to .56 (anger and disappointment in fathers). When it came to career success, both mother and father were associated with the emotion of disappointment, which means both parents are equally invested in their child’s career success. On the contrary, poor relationship status was associated with only mothers with emotions of disappointment, guilt and worry. The author suggests that it is important to consider parents’ negative emotions in context to better understand the connection between gender, emotion and parent