Теоретическая и экспериментальная психология (Jun 2023)
Life position of mothers and fathers of primary, secondary and high school students
Abstract
Background. The relevance of the study is due to the need of investigating the effects of parents’ life orientations on the process of socialization of modern schoolchildren. Objective. The study had its task to characterize the features of the relationship between the components of the life position of mothers and fathers raising children in full/single-parent families at different stages of their education. Sample of the study consisted of 302177 parents of 1–11 grade students of general education schools from 85 regions of the Russian Federation. The analysis considered the data of 16463 fathers and 285714 mothers (of which 227855 are married women, 57859 are women raising children in a single-parent family). Methods. Parents of primary, secondary, and high school students answered the ad hoc questionnaire relating to three components of their life position: value orientations, assessment of their life prospects success, assessment of subjective significance of certain social threats. The data obtained were analyzed taking into account the influence of both social stratification factors (completeness/incompleteness of a family) and a child age (grade at school). To identify the features of the relationship between the components of parental life position, the factor analysis procedure was used. Results. The study revealed that the most significant life values for parents are health, successful professional activities, achieving financial success, and a happy family life. At the same time, the value of professional realization turns out to be more significant for fathers, whereas realization in family life is more valuable for mothers. As a child grows, the parents actualize the value of professional self-realization while the importance of family life and achieving financial success decreases, and the negative assessments of their future success grow. The factor analysis revealed the peculiarities of the life position of fathers and mothers raising a child in complete vs incomplete family: the “principle of complementarity” in full families and the deformation of traditional maternal position of women raising children in single-parent families. Conclusions. The study demonstrated the significance of various life values and social threats among parents of children of different school age, which captures the uniqueness of the socio-psychological context of the child-parent relationships in the family.
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