The Relationship Between Father's Parenting Style And Primary School Pupils' Temperament, And Social Behavior

Family, which is the primary place for children to live, is the first and primary place for children's socialization. Children learned the basic living skill and criterion from family, so family, especially the parenting style, is very important for children's social development. Parent-child relationship, especially the relationship between mother and child is considered to be the important factor that influences children's social development traditionally. However, large numbers of studies indicate that the relationship between mother and child is different from father and child's, and father plays a special role in child's psychology development.The fourth to sixth grades children are in the stage from middle to late of childhood, and this stage is very important for children's social development. At this stage, children contact others more and more, and children's social behaviors influence theirs school and social adaptation more than before. Social behaviors which are the important aspect of children's socialization are not only influenced by father's parenting styles but also influenced by themselves characters. So, at first step in the present thesis, comprehensive literatures reviews were made with regard to social behavior and temperament of children and father's parenting styles. Furthermore, we investigated 476 the fourth to sixth grade children and their parents. On the base of the data, the characteristics and the relationship of children's social behaviors, temperament and father's parenting styles were examined systematically. The major findings were as follows:1).Father's parenting styles consisted of six main dimensions: (a) concern, (b) punish, (c) independent,(d)accept,(e)reject,(f)achievement. Among the six dimensions, the most frequent parenting style father used was achievement, and then: independent, accept,concern,reject, and the last one was punish. 2).Father's parenting styles and children's temperaments were different on the basis of children's gender. Comparing to girls, father used more punishment and reject to boys. Boys got more scores than girls on activity, rhythmicity, and threshold.3).Girls'prosocial and shyness were significantly higher than boys', and theirs aggression was significantly lower than boys'.4).The easy temperament children's aggression was lower than intermerate high children's; on the other hand intermerate high children's aggression was higher than slow-to-warm-up temperament children's.5).The punish and reject of father's parenting styles could significantly predict children's social behaviors. Fathers'punish could negatively predict children's prosocial, furthermore, the more punish fathers used, the less prosocial children could experience. Fathers'reject could positively predict children's aggression, in other words, the more reject fathers used, the more aggression children could experience.6).Some aspects of children's temperament could significantly predict children's social behaviors. Namely, children's activity could negatively predict children's prosocial; children's threshold, approach-withdrawal, and distractibility could positively predict children's prosocial and shyness.7).Children's activity, threshold and rhythmicity mediated the association of fathers'punish and children's prosocial absolutely. Children's adaptability mediated the association of fathers'punish and children's aggression partially; children's activity and adaptability mediated the effect of fathers'reject on children's aggression partially.