Parental practices and home environment resources of nuclear, single-parent and remarried families and behavior children during the transition to elementary school

Author(s)

Vanessa Barbosa Romera Leme

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Ribeirão Preto.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC)
• Defense date: 2011-05-05

Examining board members

Edna Maria Marturano; Anne Marie Germaine Victorine Fontaine; Sonia Regina Loureiro; Zilda Aparecida Pereira Del Prette; Lucia Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Williams

• Advisor: Edna Maria Marturano

Abstract

The theory on separation and remarriage indicates that such events are sources of stress for the whole family, especially when children are undergoing ecological transition such as entering the first year, when new skills are required of both children and parents for dealing with the demands of the new context. Taking into account the Bioecological Model of Human Development, the study aimed: a) to compare the parental practices of mothers in nuclear, single-parent, remarried families in recent transition and single-parent and remarried stable families, b) to compare the social skills, behavior problems and academic competence of children from different families, c) to compare the home environment resources of different family configurations which may contribute to the academic performance of the children, d) to investigate possible predictors of social skills and behavior, academic competence problems. The participants were 160 mothers (33 mothers were from nuclear families, 33 from single-parent families separated for less than three years, 33 from single-parent families separated for more than three years, 31 from remarried families for less than three years and 30 from remarried for more than three years) whose children attended the first year of elementary public school. The 22 teachers of the children participated as informants. Data were collected through individual interviews with the mothers in their homes or workplaces. Mothers answered a questionnaire about family characteristics, an inventory of parental practices, an inventory of social skills and behavior problems, an inventory of home environment resources and a questionnaire of socioeconomic status. Then the data were collected with the teachers of children whose mothers met the inclusion criteria. The teachers answered to an inventory of social skills, behavior problems and academic competence. The results of variances analysis indicated that mothers from nuclear families had more positive parental practices, and they had more home environment resources. The analysis also indicated that children from nuclear families had more social skills of self-control and cooperation with peers and had less behavior problems than children and mothers from other families. Mothers from families which recently become single-parent had less home environment resources. The children from these families also had less social skills and had more behavior problems than children and mothers from other families. Regression analysis indicated that negative parental practices and the quality of the relationship between child and biological father were the variables with more predictive power about social skills, behavior problems and academic competence of children in family and in school environment. According to the mothers, these variables contributed to explain 48% to 61% of the variance in behavior and academic competence of children in the final model prediction. To the teachers ratings, the values were between 9% and 17%. Globally, the study highlights the importance of the fact that, for mothers and teachers, children from different families had many social skills and dont differ in terms of academic competence. These results indicate that individual resources should function as protective factors. (AU)