出版社：Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Department of Social Work
摘要：Parents participate in regulating children’s behaviour by a wide repertoire of their practices. Preventive child-rearing practices are defined as measures of accepting a child and encouraging its desired behaviour. Corrective parental practices refer to parents’ reactions aimed at correcting children’s inappropriate behaviour and include punishments and alternatives to punishment. The sample of six-year-olds’ mothers (N=329) has revealed that they primarily use preventive child-rearing practices, then alternatives to punishment and punishments. The most common practices encouraging desired behaviour are expressing appreciation to a child for its efforts and consoling a child when upset. Allowing a child to make its own decisions is used at least. In reference to the punishment practices subject to this study, mothers report that on average they yell a few times a month and spank their child a few times a year. Alternatives to punishment include daily praise, and explaining rules of behaviour and acting as models to children weekly. Mothers monitor their child’s behaviour a few times a week and give material awards a few times a year. The obtained correlations of parental practices indicate the differences in the nature of behaviour of parents oriented towards correcting inappropriate behaviour from the way the parents encourage desired behaviour. Redirecting the focus of attention in theory and empirical research from undesirable parental practices such as punishments to alternatives to punishment and preventive parental practices gives a contribution to development of the notion of positive parenting.
