In my master’s thesis I have been researching how parents are raising their children today, what goals they are setting and how they want to achieve them, how to set and keep limits for children and how children respond to the boundaries. I have also been researching different ways of punishing and rewarding, communication between family members and demands for autonomy as well as responding to them. Since education has a major impact on the outcome of an individual, I have also touched upon the area of my own childhood upbringing and its effects on today's upbringing, the effects of the external environment on the upbringing of children and the relationship between partners.
In the theoretical part, I have described the values in upbringing that are worth fostering and preserving in a family. Since the upbringing of a child is not influenced solely by the parenting, but also by other natural and cultural factors, I have also described the influence of heredity, the environment and individual’s own activity. I have presented challenges in parenting, such as authority, establishing boundaries, rewarding and punishing, as well as the impact of an individual’s own upbringing. Finally, I could not overlook the relationship between parents and coping with problems, since establishing and maintaining a good relationship is essential for a child's well-being and optimal development.
In empirical work, nine interviews with parents were conducted, of which three interviewees were parents of one child, five couples had two or more children and one interview was performed with divorced mother. Interviews are partially structured and qualitative. The questions are of an open type, but they differ according to the shape of the family. Families with one child answered 13 questions, families with two or more children answered 14 questions and divorced parent answered on 17 questions. The data is analyzed qualitatively, with open encoding.
The purpose of the research was to investigate the achievement of the goal of education according to the external factors affecting a child, to find support in achieving the goal, to investigate the methods of reward and punishment with an intention of maintaining the boundaries and tackling interpersonal conflicts with children.
I have found out that despite all the obligations in everyday life, parents still take time to spend their free time together. They want their children to develop into independent, self-confident and hardworking people. I realized that the literature on parenting did not have any special influence on parents planning how to raise their children. Parents rely on their own feelings more and they respond to the needs of their children. I have also realized that quite a few interlocutors avoid and eliminate anchored patterns of upbringing from their childhood while trying to maintain effective methods of parenting and useful advice of the surrounding environment to bring up their child in the best possible way.
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