This diploma thesis deals with popular literature as a tool to help parents with raising their children. Firstly, I present the concept of a child and childhood through history, social changes and parenting styles in families. I also mention authority in childrearing, which is manifested differently in different parenting styles and is connected with childrearing because we can not imagine any effects of parenting without it. Later on, I present the concept of pathological narcissism and devote some attention to excessive childcare or paranoid parenthood. I mention modern insecurities of parents when it comes to bringing up a child at the end and also popular literature and its influence on parenting.
In the second part of this thesis, I represent a survey that was carried out among 45 parents of preschool and schoolchildren that attend primary school in Ljubljana and the kindergarten I work in. My survey is focused on the opinion of parents about popular literature as one of the mechanisms to help parents with childrearing. Based on the data I gained, I can conclude that reading popular literature does not help significantly with resolving educational dilemmas that parents face because the authors of educational manuals have different views on childrearing and they offer different advice and methods, thus making parents more likely to raise doubts about how to raise their child.
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