Failure–avoidance: parenting, the achievement environment of the home and strategies for reduction

This paper draws together the as yet nascent literature on the development of failure-avoidant patterns of behaviour. These are behaviours intended to minimise risk to self-worth in the event of failure, thereby avoiding the negative impact of poor performance in terms of damage to self-worth. Self-worth protection, self-handicapping, impostor fears, procrastination and defensive pessimism fit this category. Increasingly the literature reveals arresting parallels in aspects of parenting and family messages that lay behind these behaviours. On the basis of aspects of parenting and personality variables common to failure-avoidant behaviours, implications are drawn in terms of the manner in which parents and teachers may help to contain their performance-limiting consequences.