Investigation of behavioral factors supporting of parents' liking of children through different variables

The main aim of the study is to investigate cognitive and behavioral factors supporting of parents' liking of children through variables which are parenting attitudes, child gender, parents' gender, the number of children, the level of education, the socio-economic level and the place where most of the life takes place. In the study which was designed in mixed research method, a relational survey model was used. The study group consisted of 169 parents with children aged 2 to 6 years. As a means of collecting quantitative data; personal information form, Barnett Child Affection Scale and Parental Attitude Scale were used. Descriptive statistics were made by using SPSS 21 package program for the purposes of the study. The t-test was conducted to analyse whether the level of liking of children differed according to parents' gender and children; the one-way ANOVA was conducted to analyze whether the level of liking of children differ according to the number of children, level of education, the place where most of the life takes place and average income level. In the study, multiple regression analysis was performed to determine whether parental attitudes and the demographic variables predicted the levels of child liking. In the study, interview technique from qualitative research methods was applied. Qualitative research data were collected through a semi-structured interview form and analyzed using the content analysis technique. At the end of the study, it was seen that there was no significant difference between the scores of the child liking scale and the parents' gender, the gender of the child, the number of children, the education level of the parents, the socio-economic level and the place where most of the life was taken place. Regression analysis results; parental attitudes and parents' demographic variables revealed that parents explained 27% of the level of child liking. On the other hand, it was found that only the attitudes towards the child and the democratic and authoritarian parental attitudes contributed significantly to the model.