A Study On Mothers' Concepts Of Children's Autonomy Whose Children Aged From 3 To 5

Autonomy refers to the desirability and ability to choose one's goal by oneself. Age from 3 to 5 was a important stage of the development of children's autonomy. During this period, mother's concepts had great influence on the development of children's autonomy. Our research chose mothers' of children age from 3 to 5 as subjects, adopted open questionnaire on 193 mothers for the first test, on this base, adopted closed questionnaire on 461 mothers for the second test, aimed at knowing the actuality of mothers' concepts of children's autonomy. At last, 24 mothers from open questionnaire were interviewed regarding some questions from questionnaire. Questionnaire's result indicated that two thirds of mothers attached importance to fostering children's autonomy; and two thirds of mothers' comprehension on the meaning of children's autonomy was unilateral, these mothers considered that autonomy involved self-reliance and self-assertion , but in their concepts they didn't realize self-control belong to autonomy; mothers' concepts of children's autonomy area showed domain difference, they treated healthy, safe, moral, polite domain as issues that mothers should control, while personal domain was treated as up to the child; there were significant children's sex differences and mother's cultural level differences for mothers' concepts' of children's autonomy, boy's mother put more attention to making friends independently while girl's mother attached importance to living independently, girl's mother dealt with mother-child conflicts more democrat...