The purpose of this study was to investigate the actual aspects of the agreement or disagreement on the part of the parents on child-rearing attitudes and the marital relations of parents of the child patients who visit the dental office, and further the relationship to other factors which might be involved.
The subjects of this study were 186 groups of guardians of children with ages ranging from 2 to 12 years. The diagnostic test (for parents) for parent-child relationships was used for this investigation.
As for procedures to process the test results, the factors related to the degree of parental agreement or disagreement in child-rearing attitudes (4 groups: agree- ment, quasiagreement, quasidisagreement and disagreement groups), and the comparison of the types of parental child-rearing attitudes (4 types: the cases with parental agreement in a positive sense, ordinary father and bad mother, ordinary mother and bad father, and parental agreement in a negative sense), and to the parental agreement or disagreement, were compared by means of gpearman's coefficient of rank correlation.
The following results were obtained:
1) With regard to the parental agreement or disagreement concerning childrearing attitudes,93 couples out of 168 showed a high correlation (0.60) in rank correlation.
2) In a case with parental agreement in a positive sense, the ratio of parents of the control type was the highest, followed in order by the submission type and the protection type. However, in a case with parental agreement in a negative sense, the rejection type was the highest. Even in a case with parental disagreement, the rejection type was the highest in cases with a good father and a bad mother, on the other hand, in a case with a good mother and a bad father, the submission type increased.
3) The comparison of factors related to parental agreement or disagreement in child-rearing attitudes was as follows.
(1) There was a tendency for the average number of years of marriage to decrease as the number of agreement groups towards disagreement groups.
(2) The average age difference of the parents was 4 years in the agreement and quasiagreement groups, and 3 years in the quasidisagreement and disagreement groups.
(3) With regard to the number of children, there was no difference among the four groups.
(4) The more the agreement groups moved towards the disagreement ones, there was a tendency for the average are of the child to be higher.
(5) With regard to the sex of the child, the number of the girls was slightly higher in the agreement groups than that of the boys.
(6) With regard to the order of birth, the ratio of the first-born child was high in the agreement and quasiagreement groups, but the ratio of the second-born child in the quasidisagreement groups.
(7) With regard to the presence of the grandparents, there was no difference. However, in a case with one grandparent, there were few agreement groups.
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