Parental Authority, Child Autonomy and Parent—Child Relationship

• Main Authors: Huei-Shan Wu, 吳慧珊
• Other Authors: Fu-Mei Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48900902602326870719

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 兒童與家庭學系碩士班 === 97 === This study examined sixth grade students’ perception and expectation toward parental authority, child autonomy and parent-child relationship. The study further focuses on the difference between the subjects perceptions and expectations and its effects on the parent-child relationship. The subjects of the present study include 525 sixth grade students who lives in two-parent families. The results showed that the maternal authority was perceived as the highest in the family, followed by the autonomy of the child, and lastly the paternal authority. Comparing amongst various domains, children perceived that their autonomy of the “Conventional Domain” and the “Personal Domain” as significantly lower than that of the “Friendship Domain” and the “Learning Domain”. Moreover, the autonomy of the “Learning Domain” was significantly lower than that of the “Friendship Domain”. Although children perceived parental authority on decision making as higher than their autonomy, there was no significant difference on "relation satisfaction". However when children perceived parental authority as higher than their autonomy, there were higher rated of "conflicts" with parents, and thus leaded to a stronger feeling of the lack of autonomy. Secondly, the results revealed that children expected to have higher child autonomy and lower parental authority on decision making in each domain. Comparing amongst various domains, children expected to have higher autonomy on decision making in the “Learning Domain”, the “Personal Domain”, and the “Friendship Domain” than the “Conventional Domain”. Moreover, children expected the autonomy of the “Learning Domain” to be higher than that of the “Personal Domain”. This result showed that children expected to have higher child autonomy on decision making in various domains, and they expected different parental authority limits on decision making in different domains. When children could not recognize the parental authority limited on decision making in each domain, they will assume more autonomy on decision making. In addition, this lacked of recognition will tend to lead to more “conflicts,” an increased lacked of autonomy, and worsened relationship satisfaction. Finally, in all the domains of decision making, gaps between perception and expectation were significant, regardless of the paternal, maternal, and children authority hierarchy on decision making. This gap meaningfully represented how children will assign their expected reasonable parental authority and child autonomy. When children perceived to have better parent-child relationship with parents, the gap between perception and expectation authority of decision making will be smaller; if children perceived to have poor parent-child relationship with parents, the gap will be larger.