It is frequently witnessed at school or in the society that even college students have not sufficiently matured psychosocial. Such a psychosocial immaturity may be attributable to social and environmental conditions, particularly parents' child-rearin...
It is frequently witnessed at school or in the society that even college students have not sufficiently matured psychosocial. Such a psychosocial immaturity may be attributable to social and environmental conditions, particularly parents' child-rearing attitudes during their growth. While many preceding studies have reviewed the parent-child relationships, few of them have been focused on earlier adulthood.
With such a background in mind, this study was aimed at analyzing psychosocial maturity depending on parent-child relationships perceived by university students and thereby, specifying some desirable relationship between parents and children at home and providing for some data useful to parents' child-rearing.
To this end, the sample students were divided into four groups depending on their perceived relationship with their parents to test the differences of psychosocial maturity among them, while analyzing the differences of psychosocial maturity depending on individual demographic variables.
For this study, the researcher sampled 308 students attending university in Seoul. As tools for analysis, the researcher used a psychosocial maturity scale consisting of 4 areas and 59 question items developed by Suh Ok-sook(1996) referring to PBI(The Parent Bonding Instrument) developed by Parker, Tupling & Brown(1979) and revised by Carson(1987) as well as a questionnaire developed by Suh Bong-yeon and Hwang Sang-min(1993) of Seoul National University.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows;
In overall terms, the university students who perceived that they had been taken care of affectionately by their parents and they had been treated by their parents to be autonomous showed a higher level of psychosocial maturity. Specifically, in view of the areas of their psychosocial maturity,
First, there was found some significant difference of psychosocial maturity in the areas of human relations and positive thoughts depending on parents' child-rearing attitudes; this scores were highest when both father and mother had taken care of their children affectionately and autonomously.
Second, there was found some significant difference of psychosocial maturity in all 4 areas depending on how controlling parents' child- rearing attitudes had been; these scores were highest for the autonomous control on the parts of both father and mother.
Next, as a result of analyzing the correlations between parent- child relationships perceived and psychosocial maturity, it was found that a positive correlation was found between psychosocial maturity and father's child-rearing attitude, and between psychosocial maturity and mother's child-rearing attitude. However, such a correlation was negative if parents' child-rearing attitudes had been controlling.
Lastly, as a consequence of analyzing the correlation between parent-child relationships and psychosocial maturity depending on individuals' demographic variables, it was disclosed that the influential variables affecting the psychosocial maturity were gender, standing of birth, parents' academic background, family income and region.
Unlike the preceding studies focusing primarily on juveniles or those showing poor psychological adaptation, this study focused on the ordinary college students. So, this study may well be more developed by future studies. In addition, this study may be significant in that it suggested the need for researches into juveniles' poor psychosocial maturity affected by various factors, drawing attention to our juveniles' psychosocial problems.