Parents' Attitudes and Children's Deprivation: Child-Rearing Attitudes of Parents as a Key to the Advantaged-Disadvantaged Distinction in Pre-School Children

Abstract

Nine groups of kindergarten children in Israel were ranked on the advantaged-disadvantaged scale. The ranking was correlated with their parents' child-rearing attitudes. A strong positive relation was found between rigid parental directiveness and the ranking of a kindergarten group as disadvantaged. The parental attitudes were found to correlate to some degree with certain socio-cultural factors, such as educational level and national origin. It is suggested that the parents' attitudes should serve as an early predictive factor for identifying disadvantaged children for purposes of establishing intervention programs to work with children, parents, and educators.