The Generational Comparison Of Parents' Expectation On Young Children

The parents' expectations for children play a pivotal role in the attitude of raising children,which puts so great impact on the ways and contents that parents prefer as to influence on the ways of childrens' growing-up and self-development. In the system of Chinese family, it's ubiquitous phenomenon that grandparents get involved in raising their grandsons or grand-daughters while this always brings disagreements and conflicts into parents in two generations, which are based on the significant element of different expectations that the two generations hold. Besides, there are, although, fewer reports or researchs on the different attitudes and expectations of raising children between grand-parents and parents, some reports reveal that there are problems,somehow, in some aspects of raising children. This essay is going to take the young children's parents and his grand-parents as the research targets and analyse the expectations of these parents in two generations with deep and systematical explorations.This study will go into deep exploration of expectations for young children and the relevant issues,including the contents and behaviours of raising, through systematic comparison and analysis about the differences between the two generations and the issues of influential elements.Taking Shanghai as research area, through documentary study,questionnaires, half-structured deep interview and comparative study and the like,we pick 12 kindergartens out of nine districts of Shanghai for questionnaire study of the children' parents and grand-parents with 418 effective copies being returned including 268 ones of parents' and 150 ones of grand-parents', and choose 5 volunteers in two generations via half-structured interview.The result reveals that there are much more in common for the infant expectations of parents in two generations than in difference,that is,though,the parents in two generations live in different backgrounds,experience different social environments,the expectations for infant stay much the same,They basically agree on the characters,qualities,education and career expectations of infant should hold and especially focus on social expectation more than raising affection,however,diversity of expectations also lie in other aspects like what kind of people young children is hoped to be and what kind of kindergarten education they should prefer and it appears a diversity of raising contents as well. In a word, there are something in common as well as in a diversity, and the young parent prefer the multifarious education for young children rather than traditional one.