Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Parental Attitudes and Children's Social Behavior

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  • The present study was designed to examine the relationship between expressed attitudes toward child-rearing, and children's social behavior in a preschool setting. More specifically, the study was concerned with the association of parental authoritarian, hostile-rejecting, and democratic attitudes with the aggressive and cooperative peer interactions of preschool children. Under investigation also was the differential influence of the same sexed parent and opposite sexed parent on the social development of the child. It was speculated that analyses of the interaction scores of the mother and father might show a more significant relationship to children's social behavior than would parental scores taken separately. The Parent Attitude Research Instrument (PARI) was administered to the parents of 18 girls and 15 boys who attended the Child Development Laboratory at Oregon State University. Data on the social behavior of each preschool child were obtained during 30 minutes of observation using the Social Interaction Scale (SIS) and a time sampling technique. Boys' aggression was significantly related to fathers' scores on the Authoritarian-Control Factor, and to the subscale Exclusion of Outside Influence. Girls' aggression was significantly related to mothers' scores on the Democratic Factor, but negatively related to the subscale Seclusion of the Father. Mothers' scores on Fostering of Dependency were positively related to cooperation and negatively related to aggression for girls. It was also found that mothers who scored high on Rejection of the Homemaking Role had daughters who were less cooperative than their peers. However, Fostering of Dependency scores of mothers, were positively related to girls' cooperation and negatively related to girls' aggression. To examine the presence of a child-rearing attitude, the summed score of both parents was related to the child's social behavior. The summed Authoritarian-Controlling Factor scores were significantly related to boys' cooperation, while the summed Hostile-Rejecting Factor scores were negatively related to girls' cooperation. To further examine the interaction of parental attitudes, a discrepancy score which measured the degree of difference in attitude between parents, was correlated with children's social behavior. None of these correlations were statistically significant. Although the summed score and discrepancy score of parents did not seem to add important information, when parental patterns were identified according to High and Low groups on the Hostile- Rejecting Factor, it was found that the more aggressive children had parents who tended to be high on the Factor and in disagreement in their child-rearing attitudes. On the other hand, parents who were high on democratic attitudes but tended to disagree, had children who were more cooperative. It was apparent that sex differences played an important part in the child-rearing attitudes of parents. Parents of girls tended to show more agreement in their child-rearing attitudes than did the parents of boys. In addition, the attitudes of fathers seemed to be a more important influence than has been previously noted in studies on parental attitudes.
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