A Study Of Preschool Children’s Participation In Housework And Their Parents’ Attitudes And Practices

The purpose of this study was to examine children’s housework involvement in contemporary China,as well as parent’s attitudes and practices about children’s housework.Participants included326 parents with preschool-aged children(children’s mean age was 5.58 years with a standard deviation of 0.47),among which 172 were living in urban areas and 154 in rural areas.In the quantitative phase,parents completed questionnaires measuring the frequency of children’s housework and parents’ attitudes and behaviors.The results showed that the frequency of children’s housework was low,and children’s involvement in self-care housework was higher than that in family-care housework.In terms of regional and gender differences,the frequency of suburban children’s housework involvement was higher than that of urban children,and that of girls was higher than that of boys.In the qualitative phase,16 parents were selected from the 326 parents to participate in the interview.Combined with quantitative data,the results showed that most parents paid little attention to children’s housework,but they could recognize the importance of housework.Among them,a large majority of the parents thought that children’s involvement in housework was very important and expressed the value of housework.They thought that housework could promote children’s self-care ability and sense of family responsibility and cultivate parent-child relationship and prosocial behavior.But in practice,parents rarely let their children participate in housework,and children lacked guidance and help.Based on the attitudes and practices of parents,the author found an ironic phenomenon“parents can recognize the value of children’s housework at the conceptual level,but they rarely ask their children to do it in practice”.Based on further analysis,the results showed that there were many factors behind this irony:(1)The development of the society over time has caused the decrease of housework.(2)The transformation of the parents’ view on children.In the past,children always acted as labor force,but now children are “priceless.”(3)The transformation of parents’ view on education,from thinking of doing housework as a way of using children’s “labor force” to “a way of education”.(4)Children’s age also plays a role.Parents often think that children lack the ability to do housework.The results not only revealed the current situation of Chinese children’s participation in housework,but also revealed the attitudes and practices of parents about children’s housework in the context of the Chinese culture.