Event Title

A Mixed Methods Investigation of Parental Expectation and Parent-Child Relationship Among Chinese Family Groups

Document Type

Event

Start Date

28-6-2017 10:00 AM

Description

Abstract

Parents are children’s first social relationship and network. However, the knowledge of human development and understanding of family relationships are subjects rarely addressed within school curriculum. Individuals rarely receive any knowledge, if at all, in understanding family development and knowing how to cope with difficult family relationships until they find themselves in need of seeking counseling when problems arise, worsen and become unmanageable due to unmet expectations in family relationships. Parents and children both are prone to frustration, depression, even traumatization when expectations are unmet. Unmet expectations in marital relationships can get to the point where husband or wife can no longer live with the spouse he/she was once deeply in love with. Consequently, family breakup has increased and broken/dysfunctional family relationships have become a major epidemic in this modern world.

Parental expectation, particularly among Chinese family groups, is understood to be formative upon their children’s identity, behavior in family relationships, educational success and decision-making in career paths. China's long history of traditional social values, heavily based on Confucian philosophy of the family, bears this out. However, significant social changes have happened in recent years due to political shifts, modernization, capitalization, immigration, and government population control policies.

This study investigates parental expectation and its influence upon the parent-child relationship in family relationships through mixed methods because of the complexity of a very reserved Chinese culture. The qualitative research methods involved both interviews and focus group studies, while the quantitative research explores the influence of parental expectation on parent-child relationship through a questionnaire survey with 41 items in Likert scale via Exploratory Factor Analysis on SPSS.

Parental expectation is a subject on which both academic study and educational research are rather limited. This current study on parental expectation yields vital new data and calls for further empirical study to both investigate the changing state of parental expectations regarding the development of children and its critical impact on the much weakened family relationships among contemporary Chinese families.

Keywords

parental expectation, parent-child relationship, family relationship, Chinese cultural groups

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Jun 28th, 10:00 AM

A Mixed Methods Investigation of Parental Expectation and Parent-Child Relationship Among Chinese Family Groups

Abstract

Parents are children’s first social relationship and network. However, the knowledge of human development and understanding of family relationships are subjects rarely addressed within school curriculum. Individuals rarely receive any knowledge, if at all, in understanding family development and knowing how to cope with difficult family relationships until they find themselves in need of seeking counseling when problems arise, worsen and become unmanageable due to unmet expectations in family relationships. Parents and children both are prone to frustration, depression, even traumatization when expectations are unmet. Unmet expectations in marital relationships can get to the point where husband or wife can no longer live with the spouse he/she was once deeply in love with. Consequently, family breakup has increased and broken/dysfunctional family relationships have become a major epidemic in this modern world.

Parental expectation, particularly among Chinese family groups, is understood to be formative upon their children’s identity, behavior in family relationships, educational success and decision-making in career paths. China's long history of traditional social values, heavily based on Confucian philosophy of the family, bears this out. However, significant social changes have happened in recent years due to political shifts, modernization, capitalization, immigration, and government population control policies.

This study investigates parental expectation and its influence upon the parent-child relationship in family relationships through mixed methods because of the complexity of a very reserved Chinese culture. The qualitative research methods involved both interviews and focus group studies, while the quantitative research explores the influence of parental expectation on parent-child relationship through a questionnaire survey with 41 items in Likert scale via Exploratory Factor Analysis on SPSS.

Parental expectation is a subject on which both academic study and educational research are rather limited. This current study on parental expectation yields vital new data and calls for further empirical study to both investigate the changing state of parental expectations regarding the development of children and its critical impact on the much weakened family relationships among contemporary Chinese families.