Educated Vs Uneducated Parents: An Impact On The Child's Emotional And Social Development In India

According to the UNESCO, “Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals to develop their knowledge and potential and to participate fully in their community and wider society”.

India is the second most populated country after China. Despite education being the fundamental right in India, it stands first in having the highest number of uneducated adults in the world. The cause of illiteracy in India is attached to the different complex dimensions. There are income imbalances, caste imbalances, gender imbalances, state imbalances and technological limitations that lead to the existence of illiteracy in India. The literacy rates in 2011 stood 65.46% in women and 82.14% in men. Women being lower on literacy rate are also because women depend on men for various such activities which requires them to read and write. We often see that children from rich households will have better educational facilities, access to other activities like getting involved in learning new skills or sports, as compared to the children from poor households. Due to being deficient in proper skills and knowledge they get involved in unskilled labor to be able to survive in the society, which eventually leads to reduced focus on education. Education teaches a man to think rationally, act positively, and behavior in an acceptable manner. Is it said that a good parenting is a crucial part of a child’s overall growth.

It creates different social environments for children within the home and well as outside the home. Parents usually use different parenting styles depending upon their culture and societal demands. The patterns of parenting styles and their impact on child development has been widely studied. Parenting style needs to be modified according to the modification happening in a society.

The proposed research is to address the comparative study of different parenting styles of educated and uneducated parents and how does it affect a child’s development. The study will try to find out the different kinds of treatment that a child receives in different situations from his/her parents. The study will focus on at least one parent being uneducated. The study aims at finding child’s emotional and social development. Studied have been done on parenting styles and were limited to finding out which parenting style is best for a child’s development, but none focused on parent’s education and how it plays a major role in a child’s development. The ground reason for the majority of the child development or mental health problems develop in adolescence are related to parenting styles, thus looking into the parent’s educational background is important, especially in India, where the illiteracy rate is very high.India is a country where people from all strata reside but unfortunately illiterates and uneducated can be found in majority in here. Raising a child in a healthy and safe environment is an important role of parents. It is parents who inculcate the understanding of living in the society and prepare a child to meet the needs of the society. In all these roles to be played by the parents efficiently require one to be educated or not, is what the study is trying to find out.

A lot of studies have been done on parenting styles and its effects on the emotional and social development of a child also different parenting styles across cultures but none of them focused on how parents being educated or not affects the parenting styles as well as the child’s development. This study is focused to find out the relationship between being educated and parenting. Since India holds the highest rate of illiteracy, it was a need of the society to find out how much does parents’ education make a difference in child’s overall development.

According to Daina Baumrind the majority of parents exhibit one of three different parenting styles i.e. Authoritarian Parenting, Authoritative Parenting, Permissive Parenting. Further research by Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin proposed a fourth parenting style to these original three i.e. uninvolved or neglectful parenting. Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75(1), 43-88.) There has also been evidence where the child’s behavior impact parenting styles. A study states that children who showed difficult behavior, their parents began to show less parental control over time.

Another study states that the child and parent’s temperament affects parenting styles, and the parenting style of the mother may differ from father. When we talk about a child’s overall development, it is important to look into a child’s motivation.

Sample: The sample will consist of 150 (75 = educated parents 75 = uneducated parents) parents and their first born child, randomly selected from school and homes. Consent will be taken before they participate and anonymity will be duly ensured. Procedure: Participants will be required to answer questionnaires on the given scales manually or online which contain measures on all the required measures. Regression and path analyses will be performed to test each hypothesis and groups will be compared to check for differences in gender, work experience, and education.

The tests will be administered on the sample of educated and uneducated parents and their first born child living in India, with due permission and consent from them. Before the questionnaires will be handed out, rapport will be established and a brief overview of the research purpose will be outlined. The respondents will be assured of the confidentiality of their responses. They will also be requested to clarify their doubts if any. The respondent will be thanked for the participation in the study. The methodology will include both qualitative and quantitative type. Parents will mostly be interviewed and children will be assessed on the basis of tests administered. A general cognitive ability test will be administered on children and parents will be interviewed on few things.

All of the proposed measures have significant psychometric properties and have been used in previous studies.

Battelle developmental inventory (BDI): Items on adult interaction, expression of feelings/affect, self-concept, peer interaction, coping, and social role are included. For example, topic areas include showing appropriate affection toward people, pets, or possessions, using adults appropriately to help resolve peer conflict, recognizing the feelings of others, and recognizing the basic similarities of all children.

Attachment Q-sort: It is useful to view the child’s attachment to parents, teachers, and caregivers, from an objective observer’s point of view. The Attachment Q-Sort is essentially an extended rating scale, using qmethodology, suitable for examining attachment-relevant child behaviors. Although some researchers have utilized mothers as informant/observers, Waters’ original intention was for independent observers to complete the sorts. This measure examines the quality of the relationship between the child and primary caregiver, and probably their preschool teachers. The measure has a standard scoring metric and is criterion referenced. Q-Sort scores predict later behavior problems.

Sociometric ratings and nominations: Sociometric measures capture overall social status in each group; participants’ classmates are asked to name an unlimited number of children who they “like a lot” and who they “don’t like very much.”

As well, to identify aggression, they will be asked to name children who “start fights,” “yell and call other kids mean names,” “hit and push other kids.” To pinpoint relational aggression that can be such a roadblock to forgiveness, they will name children who “get even by keeping kids they are mad at out of their group of friends,” “tell their friends that they will stop liking them unless they do what they say,” “try to keep certain kids from being in their group during activity or play time,” and “ignore or stop talking to kids they are mad at.”

Psychological Well-being Scales: The RYFF scale of psychological well-being is a theoretically grounded instrument that measures multiple facets of psychological wellbeing like autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance. The short form of the inventory consists of 54 items, where participants are required to answer to each question on a scale ranging from (strongly disagree) 1 to (strongly agree) 6. One of the sample items includes “I have confidence in my opinions, even if they are contrary to the general consensus”.

Child/teacher/ parent rating scale: Assesses problem behaviors (acting-out, shy/anxious behavior, learning problems), and social competencies (frustration tolerance, peer social skills, assertive social skills, task orientation) in the school context. 38 items for adult versions, 24 for children; takes less than 20 minutes to complete.

The Depression Anxiety, Stress Scale is a measure that consists of three self-report scales that measure depression, anxiety and stress. It is a 42-item measure with responses ranging from 1 to 4.

Stress Scales: Stress is measured using the PSS (Cohen et al., 1983) which is a measure of perceived stress or the degree to which situations in one’s life are appraised as stressful (Cohen et al., 1983). The PSS consists of 14 questions designed to measure to what degree certain situations in life are appraised stressful. The questions on the PSS ask the participant how often in the last month the participant felt that way. They are required to respond to the questions using a 5-point Likert type scale ranging from 1(never) to 5 (very often). The total score is the sum of all the questions after reverse coding the required items.

Results:

Preliminary analyses will be performed to confirm scale reliability across the groups and to ensure that characteristics of the measures do not violate statistical test assumptions. Additional analyses will assess the influence of demographic (north India and south India) variables, which although are not the study’s primary focus. If and when necessary, these variables will be included as covariates or control variables in the analysis. Multiple regression analysis will be used to analyze the principal results.

Discussion

The proposed study will make a significant contribution to the effect mindfulness has on various workplace outcomes by explaining how it predicts each of the variables. The study attempts to explore certain aspects of workplace behavior and identify Eastern and Western differences in mindfulness and its conceptualization if any. As bank employees experience a competitive work environment, they have been chosen to be an apt sample for this study. The proposed research will afford an understanding of how mindfulness benefits organizations and provides guidelines for employees to engage in it for an overall work life achievement and satisfaction.