Parenting beliefs: your attitudes towards child-rearing and parenting

[ParentingQ]

Hello parents! I'm a graduate student in a developmental psychology program and am working on doing preliminary research for my thesis concerning parenting styles. I've written a very brief and (I think) interesting survey that you might enjoy taking.

It does not collect any demographic information and will not be published. I also appreciate any feedback on the questions and discussion of their relevance your own beliefs about parenting. Thanks for your time!

http://surveygizmo.com/s3/510348/Parenting

[St. Margaret]

That was interesting. I felt like I answered as honestly as I could but of course there are always nuances to such things. As you can tell by the high post counts of threads here! Good luck!

[hopefulfaith]

Interesting.  I kept wanting to qualify my answers in paragraph form.  ;)  Good luck with your research.

[katelove]

I agree with the PPs, I wanted to explain my reasoning for many of the questions. Some of them were such big things, it's hard to feel satisfied with a one line answer 

[sosurreal09]

yes to the above. I said I strongly agree that discipline is important but I also have a different view on discipline than most people...(well not on here)

[philomom]

Discipline and self- control are important for anyone to learn.

[ParentingQ]

Thanks for everyone's participation! I didn't expect to get so many responses.

I also appreciate your feedback on the questions. I well understand that they are limiting, concise, and lack nuance. My humble hope is that your personal beliefs fall somewhere between those responses and that we interpret the questions similarly.

It would be always be great to find out more, but I'm not looking to waste anyone's time (especially without compensation). As St. Margaret noted: the various forum discussions go into far more detail and discussion than I could hope to do justice to in a short survey. I do hope that the questions were interesting and helped you understand clearer where you stand as a parent in relation to other parents.

To address a few other things:

Originally Posted by philomom 

Discipline and self- control are important for anyone to learn.

They're important to many, but not all.  I did my best to respect the wide diversity of beliefs people have about self-control and discipline and I'll tell you that there are quite a few people who don't value either of those principles as much as they value others. Those are the attitudes I was interested in learning about.

Originally Posted by sosurreal09 

yes to the above. I said I strongly agree that discipline is important but I also have a different view on discipline than most people...(well not on here)

That is one of the issues, too. I tried to leave that open to your interpretation of discipline, as the various approaches are beyond the scope of the survey. Thanks for pointing that out, however, it's worth looking at that question again to see if it needs to be changed.

Thanks for everyone's time.

[MittensKittens]

Originally Posted by katelove 

I agree with the PPs, I wanted to explain my reasoning for many of the questions. Some of them were such big things, it's hard to feel satisfied with a one line answer 

Exactly. I clicked the answer that most applied, but it would have been much more accurate if it would have been possible to elaborate.

[KristyDi]

I had particular trouble with #7 "At what age does a child become personally responsible for their actions?"

I really didn't feel like any of the answers applied.  There's no set point when every child becomes responsible for all their actions.  It's a continuum and none of the answers included that.  Even knowing right from wrong doesn't mean a child is developmentally ready to have the impulse control to act on what they know is right (or stop themselves from doing what they know is wrong)

[katelove]

Originally Posted by KristyDi 

I had particular trouble with #7 "At what age does a child become personally responsible for their actions?"

I really didn't feel like any of the answers applied.  There's no set point when every child becomes responsible for all their actions.  It's a continuum and none of the answers included that.  Even knowing right from wrong doesn't mean a child is developmentally ready to have the impulse control to act on what they know is right (or stop themselves from doing what they know is wrong)

Yes and also, what actions are we talking about? As you say, it's a continuum so they can probably be responsible for some actions sooner than others.

[Tjej]

That was a fun little survey.  I'm curious to know what, in particular, you're looking for/at in the survey.

Tjej

[One_Girl]

I liked the survey but had trouble with number 7 because I wasn't sure if we were talking about responsibility in a punitive way or as in children should get to make decisions type of way.  I went with the first assumption and disagreed but if it were the second then I would agree so you might want to consider rewording the question if you plan on interviewing people later on if you use it in your research.

[captain optimism]

What are "traits"? I think it's important for parents to pass on values, but traits sounds like something genetic, and as a non-Lamarckian, I don't think I can say it's something good or bad to pass on genetic characteristics. Since that's, you know, involuntary. Values, yes, ethics, yes, but I don't think I care whether my child has reddish hair. You know? 

[Tjej]

Yeah, I thought traits meant genetic traits or personality traits - not character.  So if you are going for values/character, I'd re-word that one. 

Tjej