The Correlative Study Between Maternal Personality And 5-Year-Old Children's Autonomy

Autonomy is the desire and ability to achieve their reasonable goal by depending on one's own strengths, which consists of three dimensions: self-reliance, self-control and self-assertion. In view of the limit of time and conditions, this study is limited to study the individual values of autonomy which consist of self-reliance and self-assertion. In recent years, scholars at home and abroad who largely study autonomy have found that various factors affect the development of autonomy. Especially, it is generally recognized that parenting affects the development of children's autonomy, but the potential influence factor of parenting– parents'personality has fewer correlative study. So far as the current study is concerned, there is no correlative study between parents'personality and children's autonomy. Therefore, this study will explore the relationship between maternal personality and 5-year-old children's autonomy. The completion of this study can enrich the theories of psychological development of children and provide some reference for family education of early childhood in practice.The research methods refer to questionnaire and experiment. Questionnaire is used in measuring maternal personality. 3 to 5-year-old children'mothers who are twice taken at random from Dalian and Shenyang city are 800 and 600 respectively. The collectably valid questionnaires are 610 and 472 respectively, which are used in revising personality questionnaire. Experiment is used in measuring the level of children's autonomy. 34 five-year-old children who are taken at random from Dalian city are engaged in the experiment of autonomy. Mothers of participants of the experiment are requested to fill out the revised personality questionnaires. Finally, the relationship between maternal personality and children's autonomy will be treated with correlative and regressive analysis.The results of this study show that: 1. Revised personality questionnaire has higher reliability and validity, which can serve as a tool to measure maternal personality. 2. Maternal openness to experience is significantly positively related to the total score of autonomy, self-reliance and self-assertion of children. Maternal high openness to experience is associated with the high level of children's autonomy; maternal low openness to experience is associated with the low level of children's autonomy. The result of further regressive analysis shows that not only does maternal openness to experience affect the development of children's overall autonomy, but also affects the development of two dimensions (self-reliance and self-assertion) of autonomy. 3. Maternal agreeableness is significantly positively related to the total score of children's autonomy. Maternal high agreeableness is associated with the high level of children's autonomy; maternal low agreeableness is associated with the low level of children's autonomy; and maternal high agreeableness is also positively related to two dimensions (self-reliance and self-assertion) of autonomy, but no significant correlation. The result of further regressive analysis shows that there is no causal relationship between them. 4. Maternal extroversion is significantly positively related to children's self-assertion. Maternal high extroversion is associated with the high level of children's self-assertion; maternal low extroversion is associated with the low level of children's self-assertion; but no significant correlation with self-reliance and the total score of autonomy of children. The result of further regressive analysis shows that maternal extroversion affects the development of children's self-assertion. 5. There are significant differences of the different level of education for maternal openness to experience, extroversion and agreeableness. 6. There are no significant differences of the different type of occupation for five dimensions of maternal personality.