This study is to understand what kind of differences there are on school adjustment and peer attachment among the three categories sorted by absence of parents after school which are adult protection, temporary self-care and self-care groups for early...
This study is to understand what kind of differences there are on school adjustment and peer attachment among the three categories sorted by absence of parents after school which are adult protection, temporary self-care and self-care groups for early adolescence children and to find out regulation effects of parenting attitude, existence of siblings and sex among absence of parents after school, school adjustment and peer attachment. In order to do so, the study had 2,378 subjects who participated first year to fifth year in four grade panels out of data from Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey(KCYPS) which has been implemented by National Youth Policy Institute since 2010 until 2016.
The followings are the key results of the study. First, adoption of self-care group was lower than that of adult protection group. Secondly, during the parenting attitude to adult protection group in school adjustment, rational explanation appeared to have more positive interaction effect than to self-care group. Girls were better at adapting to school than boys. Also while boys who were in temporary self-care group appeared to have the best relationship with friends which is subdivision of school adjustment, girls who were in adult protection group appeared to have the best relationship with friends. Existence of siblings did not influence on the correlation between absence of parents and school adjustment. Moreover, for peer attachment, during the parenting attitude to adult protection group, supervision appeared to have more positive interaction effect than to temporary self-care group, and excessive expectation to self-care group had more positive interaction effect than to adult protection group. For communication which is a subdivision of peer attachment, supervision appeared to have more positive interaction effect to adult protection group than temporary self-care group, and excessive expectation appeared to have more positive interaction effect to self-care group than adult protection group. Also, girls seemed to have more peer attachment than boys. For boys, temporary self-care showed the highest peer attachment while adult protection group showed the highest peer attachment for girls. The adult protection group for girls and temporary self-care group for boys had the highest scores for communication and trust which are other subdivisions of peer attachment. Existence of siblings did not influence on the correlation between absence of parents and peer attachment.
As a result of this study, in order to help school adjustment and peer attachment of early adolescence children effectively, parents should consider absence of parents and traits depending on sex of their children, and it is verified that parents need to take proper parenting attitude. In addition, this study is relevant to improve awareness of grownup guardians of child neglect after school by showing that existence of siblings cannot be protection factor when leaving children alone. From this, the researcher hope the study helps parents who have early adolescence children to understand characteristics of children depending on the absence of parents and expect the study to be used as a baseline data for further more in-depth studies on self-care children.