| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 幼兒教育學系碩士在職專班 === 103 === The purpose of this study was to investigate expectation of father’s roles and performance of father’s roles and how each of them is correlated with marital quality among parents of preschool children in central Taiwan. The questionnaire survey method was adopted. The instrument was a self-developed “Questionnaire on Expectation of Father’s Roles, Performance of Father’s Roles, and Marital Quality”. Based on stratified random sampling, a total of 1400 parents of 700 preschool children between 2-6 of age were selected from kindergarten students in central Taiwan. From these parents, 1160 valid responses were obtained. Data were later analyzed using methods including descriptive statistics, paired-sample t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s product-moment correlation, and multiple regression. The main findings were as follows:
1. The parents of preschool children in central Taiwan showed a high level of expectation of father’s roles, with the expectation of “economic support” being the highest, followed by “instruction on learning”, “care and guidance”, and “care of daily living needs”. In terms of mother’s expectation of father’s roles, the expectation of “instruction on learning” was the highest, followed by “care and guidance”, “economic support”, and “care of daily living needs”.
2. As to overall expectation of father’s roles, fathers’ views varied significantly by their “average monthly income”, “socioeconomic status”, and “number of hours spent on house chores” and mothers’ views varied by their “number of children in the family”, “occupation”, “average monthly income”, and “socioeconomic status”. In both gender groups, “age”, “education degree”, “number of work hours” or “family structure” were not the variables that would significantly affect expectation of father’s roles.
3. The parents of preschool children in central Taiwan reported a high performance of father roles. Both gender groups showed that father’s performance was highest in the “economic support” dimension, followed by “instruction on learning”, “care and guidance”, and “care of daily living needs” dimensions.
4. As to the overall performance of father’s roles, both genders' perceptions varied significantly by “education degree”, “occupation”, “average monthly income”, and “socioeconomic status”. Significant differences existed between father’s “numbers of hours spent on house chores” and mother’s “family structures”. In both gender groups, differences between “ages”, “numbers of children”, and “work hours” were not significant.
5. Both expectation of father’s roles and performance of father’s roles were correlated with marital status, but the greater the gap between expectation and performance of father’s roles, the worse the marital quality.
6. It was also found that fathers tended to perceive positive and better marital quality when they had higher performance in “instruction on learning”, “economic support”, “care and guidance”, and “care of daily living needs”, and their child could live with their grandparents; mothers tended to perceive positive and better marital quality when their husbands had higher performance in “instruction on learning”, “economic support”, “care and guidance”, and “care of daily living needs”, and they had a healthy family structure.
Based on the above findings, this study also proposed suggestions to parents of preschool children, authorities concerned, kindergartens, and future researchers.
Keywords: central Taiwan, parents of preschool children, expectation of father's role, conduct of fatherhood, marital quality
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