Investigation of child raising attitudes of mothers with and without child development education

Motherhood is a critical transition period that brings with it many responsibilities, new roles and a process of change. The role of motherhood and, accordingly, child-rearing behaviors can be affected by some factors. One of these factors can be considered as the state of knowledge about child development. In this context, the aim of this study is to examine the child-rearing attitudes of mothers who received undergraduate education in the field of child development and mothers who did not receive undergraduate education in the field of child development, according to various demographic variables, and to reveal the similarities and differences between the two groups. In the study, a total of 103 mothers were reached, 52 of whom were educated at undergraduate level in the field of child development and 51 mothers who did not receive undergraduate education in the field of child development, determined by criterion sampling and snowball sampling method. Research data were collected through the "Personal Information Form" developed by the researcher and the "Child Raising Attitude Scale" developed by Kılınç (2011). SPSS 21 Package Program was used in the analysis of the data. Skewness and kurtosis values were taken into account for the data to be suitable for normal distribution. Parametric and non-parametric statistical analyzes were carried out in line with the distribution of the data. In addition, in the context of the reliability of the data, the Croanbach Alpha Internal Consistency Coefficient was calculated for the overall and sub-dimensions of the scales. In the analysis of the data, frequency, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t-test, Pearson Correlation test, one-way analysis of variance, Post-Hoc test statistics tests were used. As a result, it is seen that there is a significant relationship between the child-rearing attitudes of mothers who received undergraduate education in the field of child development and those who did not receive undergraduate education in the field of child development, in favor of mothers who received undergraduate education in the field of child development. According to all socio-demographic variables, while democratic and protective attitude scores were higher in mothers who received undergraduate education in child development, it was concluded that authoritarian and overly tolerant attitude scores were higher in mothers who did not receive undergraduate education in child development. In this context it is seen that the child-rearing attitudes of young mothers compared to older mothers, mothers with one child compared to mothers with more than one child, mothers with young children compared to mothers with older children, mothers with daughters compared to mothers with sons, mothers with a third or subsequent child of their current child compared to mothers with one or a second child of their current child, mothers who take care of their children compared to mothers who take care of their children differ significantly.