The concepts of modern parents about their own childhood and the childhood of their children: comparative research

Introduction: as modern society undergoes global transformations, childhood as a historically determined socio-cultural phenomenon changes, as well. The transformations of modern childhood arouse increasing interest among the researchers, but it is also important to get an idea of how modern parents who grew up under different socio-cultural conditions see their child’s childhood now.

Materials and methods: we used the sentence completion technique. The results were processed using the method of content analysis.

Findings: the parents’ image of childhood has a certain structure and dynamics. The image of modern childhood transforms depending on the age of the child, whose childhood is described by the parents. The basic, steady components of the childhood image are parents, family, and the time that child spends with his/her parents. The dynamic components correspond to the peculiarities of child’s age-related needs: for a preschooler, this is positive emotional background created by the family (joy, happiness, sense of security), for a younger teenager, this is school and studying, for an older teenager, this is virtual communication, life in the information space. In contrast, the parents’ image of their own childhood is more static and stereotypical: its core content is close relationships with parents and family as well as strong positive emotional background (“happy childhood”) which corresponds to the image of preschool childhood.

Discussion and conclusions: the image of childhood reflects parents’ intuitive ideas about the basic needs of their children. In general, parents’ ideas about childhood correspond with the traditionally specified age-related content of the need-motivational sphere that doesn’t fundamentally change in the generation of today's children, although it is realized in slightly different forms. Adults perceive their own childhood as well as the childhood of their children directly, without evaluating it; however, more mature parents try to interpret the changes they observe in the modern childhood.

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