"Self-esteem" always comes at the loss of self-respect.
I think having self-respect involves having a conscience- not something I've ever heard much about in discussions of "self-esteem".
'self esteem' is not what people want. It is the compliance of and discipline to do the right thing and remain humble to serving God each day that is paramount. Pretty simple. Suddenly when one does this, self obsession becomes less of a focus and one may even find themselves at peace internally, and have some authentic joy.
Our society has plenty of children who hold unrealistic notions about themselves, i.e., who have "self-esteem."
What is lacking in our society is children who are certain that they are loved. The reason is simple: They're not.
They are systematically ignored during their most formative years (0-3) by parents who are physically and/or emotionally absent and/or distracted by work and/or TV. After the age of six, most children are then imprisoned in government facilities for twelve years.
People who are certain that they are loved do not need to be inculcated with narcissistic delusions about themselves (i.e., "self-esteem"). Since we have a shortage of the former, we have an abundance of the latter.
I've always thought of 'self-esteem' as just more political rationalizing than real science. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (no offense) to realize that when you lower standards and expectations, you're telling your protected class that they're idiots and incompetents. So IF self-esteem is the objective, it can't be created by dumbing down standards or creating artificial achievements. Even a moron can see through that.
Chapter One.
Do esteemable things.
The End.
If someone has my esteem, it is only because they earned it. Nowadays, kids are taught they should have esteem for everyone, including themselves, just because they breathe.
Nathaniel Branden wrote numerous best-selling popualar psychology books on the subject of self-esteem. His writings did much to make the general public aware of the term. He is, however, scarcely connected with the mainstream of the self-esteem movement, which grew out of humanistic psychology and the therapuetic ideas of people like Carl Rogers.
Nothing wrong with self-esteem. But what the self-esteem movement doesn't seem to understand is that youo don't teach self-esteem, you show people how ot develop it and earn it.
Most of them are secular humanists. They might love this quote:
"In the modern world, the task of the humanist is to remind man of his spiritual reality." -- Irving Babbitt
Look at how our semantics have changed over time from the more holy, service, and disciplined oriented language to self language and deserve language since the 60's. What a mind fu-- we have been through.
The 60's really were a time of great evil upheaval and it has snowballed since. Just my two cents.