To compare the child nurturing attitude of mothers perceived by children with that
perceived by mothers, a cross-sectional survey was conducted on 778 child-mother pairs
of the fifth and sixth grades children of an elementary school in Taegu from April 9, 1990 to April 14, 1990. A selfadministered questionnaire developed by Oh Gi-Sun and modified for this study was used for both children and mothers to determine the child nurturing type of mothers.
The proportion of mothers who perceived their attitude desirable was 94.9% while
78.5% of children perceived their mothers’ attitude desirable. The types of maternal
attitude perceived by mothers concurred with the types perceived by children in 76.6%.
The proportion of boys who perceived their mothers’ attitude desirable was 73.0% while
that for the girls was 84.6%. The differential percentages for desirable attitude between
mothers and children and between boys and girls were mainly due to the fact that boys
perceived their mothers’ attitude as protective in 9.1% and dominating in 10.0% while
their mothers perceived their attitude as such in only 4.4% and 1.7%, respectively but
the percentages for the girls were 4.6% and 6.2% while those for their mothers were
1.6% for both protective and dominating.
The percentage for mothers who perceived their attitude desirable was higher among
mothers who lived in a rental room(100.0%) than the mothers in their own house
(94.6%) and in a rental house(93.8%). Such percentage increased as the educational level of mothers decreased (elementary school, 97.2%; college, 80.6%) and increased as the maternal age increased (31-35 years, 89.7%; 46 years and over, 97.8%). However, the
trends of responses of children were exactly the opposite to the mothers’ responses.
In the case of the only child, 26.3% of them perceived their mothers’ attitude as
protective while only 3.7% of the second born children perceived as much.
The first born children perceived their mothers’ attitude as dominating in a higher percentage (11.2%) than the children of other birth orders. The second born children perceived their mothers’ attitude as rejective more (5.2%) than the children of other birth orders. The percentages of children who perceived their mothers as dominating and rejective were higher for the children living in a rental room, for the children of mothers of lower educational level, and for the children of older mothers. Thus, the proportion of mothers who perceived themselves desirable while their children perceived their mothers’ attitude undesirable was higher in such cases as living in a rental room, lower educational level of mothers, and older mothers.
As the proportion of nuclear family with one or two children increases, it is
recommended to strengthen the school and public education to promote a sound sense of
value and child nurturing attitude.
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