The Future Orientation And Its Relation To Parenting Styles And Self-concept Among High School Students

Nurmi argues that the future orientation reflects the individual's ability to anticipate,plan,and evaluate and orient itself in the future.High school stage is a critical period of life development.During this period,individual's body,appearance,behavior,self-consciousness,communication,emotional characteristics,outlook on life and other aspects are basically mature,close to adults,and began to think about their future development issues.The future orientation of high school students in this study includes three aspects,and they are the exploration and commitment in future education,occupation and marriage or family.Affected by the family system theory,the family is regarded as a integrate system with complex interactions between family members.Parenting affects teenagers' future orientation.This study is going to examine the characteristics of the future orientation among high school students and determine whether self-concept plays a mediating role between parenting and future orientation.537 high school students in Jinan were selected in this study.Adolescents' future orientation questionnaire,parental bonding instrument,Tennessee self-concept scales were used to measure variables.SPSS and AMOS were used to analyze the data and main research results as follows:(1)There were significant gender and grade differences in the future family exploration and commitment among high school students,specifically,boys in the future family exploration and commitment were significantly higher than girls';the second year and third year high school students' exploration of family was significantly higher than that of the first year students',and the difference between the third year and the second year students was not significant.The students of the third year were significantly higher than those of the first and second year high school students.There was no significant gender or grade difference in the other dimensions of high school students' future orientation,and all dimensions were notsignificant in the only child.The future orientation of high school students does not have significant interaction between sex,grade and only child,and between them.(2)The variables of parental care,parental autonomy encouragement,self-conc ept,education commitment,occupation commitment and family commitment were si gnificantly positive correlated with each other.Parental control was significantly neg ative correlated with self-concept and educational exploration.Self-concept was sign ificantly positively correlated with education commitment,education exploration,oc cupation commitment and family commitment.Educational exploration,educationa l commitment,occupation exploration,occupation commitment,family exploration a nd family commitment were significantly positive correlated with each other excep t for the relationship among educational exploration,family commitment,occupation exploration and family commitment.(3)The self-concept of high school students played a mediating role in the relation of parenting and future orientation.Specifically,self-concept mediated the relationship between parental care and family and occupation orientation;parental autonomy encouragement can also affect the future of the family through self-concept.