Relationship between Hardiness in Students and Their Parents’ Attitude to Them

Abstract

The authors focus on the controversial situation of a large number of theoretical and practical works on psychological aspects of education, the high importance of hardiness for productive life of individuals in modern society and the absence of works exploring how parents influence the formation of hardiness in their children. The paper presents results of the study of the relationship between hardiness in young male and female students and the features of their subjective childhood image of family and current attitudes of their parents. The sample of the study was 119 students (43 males and 76 females).Methodological support of the research included the following: Hardiness test (Hardiness Survey by S. Muddi, adapted by D.A. Leontiev); two scales of the BIV questionnaire (Biographisches Inventar zur Diagnose von Verhaltenstörungen) revealing the nature of childhood image of family; the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics technique assessing the key aspects of relationships. The results of the study showed that the level of hardiness in the subjects is closely related to the nature of their childhood images of family: the more positive the image is, the higher the hardiness. The relationship between hardiness and the current attitude of parents has both common and gender-specific trends. Parental care and high interest in preserving the child’s attachment impede the manifestation of hardiness in the young people. The gender specifics of those aspects of parental attitude that promote hardiness does not coincide with the generally accepted patterns.