On the Issue of Educational Strategies of Modern Parents of Preschoolers: Goals and Objectives of Upbringing

Abstract

Background. In the context of socio-cultural transformations that lead to a "blurring" of traditional parenting models, the problem of parents' choice of educational orientations becomes especially urgent. Consequently, there is a need to study the attitudes of modern parents towards the goals of raising preschool children, which determines the relevance of this research.

Objective. The goal is to identify the features of the influence of the gender-role structure of the family and the educational status of parents on their understanding of goals and objectives of education.

Study Participants. A total of 42,865 parents of preschoolers participated in an anonymous questionnaire survey, using a specially developed questionnaire. In accordance with the study's objectives, subsamples were identified: fathers (1,313 respondents), married mothers (34,199), and officially divorced mothers (2,535). Subsamples were divided by educational status: fathers with secondary education (485); fathers with higher education (828); "married" mothers with secondary education (10,046); "married" mothers with higher education (24,153); "divorced" mothers with secondary education (952); "divorced" mothers with higher education (1,583).

Methods. Survey data were processed using the SPSS 21 and StatSoft Statistica 7.0 statistical software packages. All differences in respondents' responses discussed in the article are statistically significant at p ≤ 0.05 level. To study the interrelations of the components of "life position", the method of factor analysis was used (the method of extracting Principal Components with Varimaks axes rotation with Kaiser normalization).

Results. The obtained results concerning the characteristics of the orientation-planning phase of parental educational strategies showed a clear influence of such social stratification indicators as the role position of an adult (father/mother), level of education (higher/secondary) and the marital status of the mother ("married"/"divorced"). The main substantive oppositions were identified: "subject of activity — social adaptability", "adult as a cultural mediator, introduction to culture — education of moral and ethical guidelines, altruism"; "positive worldview, trust in the world — rule-based actions based on compliance with the social vertical".

Conclusions. Substantive oppositions that characterize the uniqueness of the target guidelines of parental strategies for raising a preschool child are built not as much on the basis of rigid logical binary oppositions, but rather on socio-cultural semantic contrasts. The discovered phenomenon concerning the principle of complementarity of maternal and paternal educational strategies when raising a child in a complete family is of particular interest.