Imposter Feelings Start Early: How Parenting Styles and Values Shape Children’s Self-Doubt

Imposter syndrome has long been treated as an affliction of high achievers, a psychological pattern first described among accomplished professional women who, despite evident success, remained convinced they were frauds on the verge of being exposed. The phenomenon, formally known as the imposter phenomenon, involves persistent feelings of intellectual inadequacy and a stubborn inability to internalize one’s own successes. Now a new study published in the journal Trends in Psychology suggests that these corrosive self-doubts may take root far earlier than most researchers have assumed, in children as young as nine, and that the family environment, particularly parenting styles and the values children absorb at home, plays a measurable role in whether such feelings emerge.

The research, led by Ana Karla Silva Soares of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, together with Eduardo França do Nascimento, Renata Tereza dos Passos Costa, Alessandro Teixeira Rezende, and Kátia Regina Bazzano da Silva Rosi, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: to what extent, and in which direction, is the imposter phenomenon related to human values and parenting styles among children? While interest in the origins of imposter feelings has grown steadily in recent decades, few studies have explored the possibility that the seeds of this phenomenon are planted in childhood, long before university examinations, doctoral defenses, or workplace promotions provide the achievements that adults feel unworthy of.

To investigate the question, the team recruited 201 elementary school students between the ages of nine and twelve, with an average age of ten and a standard deviation of 1.06. The sample was mostly female, at 54.5 percent, and overwhelmingly drawn from public schools, which accounted for 97.5 percent of participants. The largest single group, 35 percent of the children, was in the fifth year of schooling. Each participant completed a battery of instruments: the Child Impostor Phenomenon Scale, designed to capture imposter feelings in age-appropriate language; the Reduced Parental Perception Questionnaire, which measures how children perceive the emotional and demanding dimensions of their parents’ behavior; the Questionnaire of Basic Values for Children, grounded in the functionalist theory of human values developed by the Brazilian psychologist Valdiney Gouveia; and a set of sociodemographic questions.

The results, published on 23 October 2025, reveal a consistent pattern of negative associations. The imposter phenomenon was significantly and negatively correlated with a demanding parental style, with a correlation coefficient of r = −.14. In other words, children who perceived their parents as more demanding, in the sense of setting expectations, supervising behavior, and requiring accountability, reported fewer imposter feelings, not more. This finding runs counter to a popular intuition that strict, high-expectation parenting breeds self-doubt. Instead, the data suggest that parental demandingness, a core component of the authoritative parenting style first described by developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind in the 1960s, may provide children with the structure and feedback they need to accurately calibrate their sense of their own abilities.

The value measurements added a second layer of insight. Using the functionalist framework, which organizes human values into distinct orientations that guide behavior, the researchers found that imposter feelings were negatively correlated with both interactive values, at r = −.15, and normative values, at r = −.18. Interactive values, in this theoretical tradition, emphasize relationships, affection, and social connection, while normative values emphasize rules, obligations, and respect for established norms. Children who scored higher on these value orientations tended to report fewer feelings of being an intellectual fraud. The interpretation offered by the functionalist perspective is that children who internalize the importance of norms and interpersonal bonds may develop a more stable and socially anchored sense of self, one less vulnerable to the gap between external achievement and internal self-worth that defines the imposter experience.

Perhaps the most technically interesting result concerned moderation. The researchers found that the demanding style of fathers, specifically paternal requirement, moderated the relationship between normative human values and the imposter syndrome in children. Moderation analysis, a statistical technique popularized in psychology by Andrew Hayes, tests whether the strength or direction of an association between two variables depends on the level of a third variable. In this case, the link between a child’s endorsement of normative values and their imposter feelings was not uniform across all levels of paternal demandingness. The father’s behavioral profile, in effect, changed the terrain on which the child’s values operated. This suggests that values and parenting do not act as independent levers on a child’s psychology but interact in ways that researchers are only beginning to map.

The study’s theoretical grounding is worth unpacking. The concept of the imposter phenomenon originated in 1978, when psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes described it among high-achieving women in clinical settings. Subsequent work extended the construct to university students, doctoral candidates, and professionals across many fields, and systematic reviews of measurement scales have catalogued a proliferation of instruments designed to quantify it. Research has linked imposter feelings to perfectionism, low self-esteem, social anxiety, self-handicapping, and psychological distress, and studies have repeatedly implicated family background, including parental rearing styles and parental bonding, as formative influences. What has remained scarce is direct evidence from children themselves, rather than adult recollections of childhood, which are vulnerable to memory distortion and retrospective bias.

By measuring imposter feelings in nine- to twelve-year-olds directly, the Brazilian team provides some of the clearest evidence yet that the phenomenon is not confined to adulthood. The use of a dedicated child-scale instrument, whose factor structure was examined with modern exploratory factor analysis techniques, including methods for selecting the number of common factors, reflects a growing methodological sophistication in this literature. The correlations reported, while modest in magnitude, as is typical for single-variable associations in developmental psychology, are statistically meaningful and point in theoretically coherent directions. A demanding parental style and the internalization of interactive and normative values both appear to act as protective factors against the conviction that one’s successes are undeserved.

The findings carry practical implications for parents, educators, and clinicians. If demandingness, understood as consistent expectations and accountability rather than hostility or control, is associated with fewer imposter feelings, then parenting advice that equates warmth with permissiveness may be missing part of the picture. Baumrind’s classic framework distinguished authoritative parenting, which combines demandingness with responsiveness, from both authoritarian and permissive styles, and decades of research have associated the authoritative profile with better emotional and academic outcomes in children. The present study adds a new outcome to that list: a reduced tendency to discount one’s own accomplishments. Similarly, the protective role of normative and interactive values suggests that children who grow up in environments where rules, obligations, and caring relationships are salient may be better insulated against the self-doubt that undermines performance and well-being.

The authors are careful about the limits of their data. The study is correlational, so it cannot establish whether demanding parenting causes lower imposter feelings, whether children who feel less like imposters simply perceive their parents as more demanding, or whether some third factor, such as temperament or socioeconomic conditions, shapes both. The sample, drawn almost entirely from public schools in Brazil, may not generalize to other cultural contexts, and the modest sample size of 201 constrains the precision of the estimates. Data collected from minors are protected by ethical restrictions and are not publicly available, though the authors note they can be shared upon reasonable request with permission from the research ethics committee. The work was funded by Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, and the authors declare no competing interests. Even with these caveats, the study opens a striking window onto the early life of a psychological pattern that has cost countless adults their confidence, and it suggests that the fight against imposter feelings may begin not in the therapist’s office but at the kitchen table, in the daily interplay of expectations, values, and love that shapes who children believe themselves to be.

Subject of Research: The relationship between human values, parenting styles, and the imposter phenomenon in children

Article Title: Evaluating the Role of Human Values and Parenting Styles in the Imposter Syndrome Among Children

Article References: Soares, A. K. S., do Nascimento, E. F., dos Passos Costa, R. T., Rezende, A. T., & da Silva Rosi, K. R. B. (2025). Evaluating the Role of Human Values and Parenting Styles in the Imposter Syndrome Among Children. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-025-00459-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43076-025-00459-7

Keywords: imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon, parenting styles, human values, child development, developmental psychology, self-esteem, parental demandingness, Brazil, Trends in Psychology, childhood mental health, academic psychology