The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of parents with school children about parent education and their needs for that in consideration of whether they were single-income or two-earner families in an effort to determine some of the ri...
The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of parents with school children about parent education and their needs for that in consideration of whether they were single-income or two-earner families in an effort to determine some of the right directions for parent education geared toward dual-income families and to discuss how to take advantage of parent education.
The subjects in this study were parents whose children were in the second, fourth and sixth years of elementary school.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
First, concerning their outlook on parent education, the greatest percentage of the two-earner families thought that parent education should start to be provided to families with preschoolers. But the largest percentage of the single-income families believed parent education should start to be offered to families with school-aged children. Thus, the two groups took a different view of the right time for parent education.
The single-income families who found it advisable for mothers to receive parent education outnumbered the two-earner families who did. The single-income families were better aware of educational environments for their children than the dual-income families.
Second, as for the state of parent education, the single-income families had more experience to take parent education at educational institutions other than elementary school than the double-income families.
Not many of the parents received parent education in elementary school, and the single-income families took more parent education than the two-earner families.
The type of parent education that could be conducted at home without having the parents visit school and was most widely received by them was through written notices or home reports. Many of the parents took parent education through notices or home reports, but they scarcely took parent education through school homepages or by being visited by teachers.
Third, as to their satisfaction level with parent education, the largest percentage of the single-income and two-earner families found parent education courses satisfactory because of the opportunity to experience their children's real lives in a secondhand manner. In regard to the second most common reason why parent education courses were satisfactory, the double-income families felt that those courses let them realize what they usually wanted to know, and the single-income families considered those courses to be practical and applicable to real life.
Fourth, regarding their needs for parent education, their opinions about how to receive the kind of parent education that should be conducted at school were investigated. As a result, Saturdays and one of weekdays were respectively preferred the most by the two-earner families and single-income families, and the dual-income families also mentioned one of weekdays as the second most favored day. It indicated that the double-income families were willing to receive parent education on weekdays if necessary. As to their preference for the time for parent education, the single-income families had the most preference for 9 to 12 a.m. The double-income families also had the most preference for 9 to 12 a.m., and their second most favored time was about 2 p.m. But the gap between the time preference of the two groups was not significant.
In regard to the kind of parent education that didn't call on them to visit school, the two-earner families considered it most advisable to take that education once a week, and the single-income parents preferred once a month the most.
As for what's considered important in receiving parent education in elementary school, there was a difference between the double-income and single-income families, as the former took education time into account more than the latter.