Adolescent Parenting and Parenthood Preparedness: Procedures for Collection of Opinions About Children, Child Rearing, Parenting, and Parent Education From Rural County Secondary Schools

156 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1980.The purpose of this study was to assess the opinions and skills of secondary school students concerning their state of preparedness for assuming the parenting role. A questionnaire designed by the researcher was used to accomplish this purpose. The study examined the opinions high school students held about parents, children, the parenting process, adolescent parenthood, and child care tasks the students felt they possessed.The sample consisted of 264 tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students enrolled in the three Coles County high schools. One-hundred eighteen males and 146 females completed the questionnaire. A limitation of the study was that a purposive sample (intact classes) was used.The research instrument consisted of five sections which assessed (1) students' opinions about parenting, children, child rearing, and parent education in the secondary school; (2) students' opinions about alternatives for teenage parenting and child rearing; (3) child care tasks the students had done or felt they could do; (4) opinions about the students' intent to become parents at some future date; and (5) personal data about age, grade level, size of family of orientation, and amount of babysitting done outside the home. Items in section one of the instrument comprised seven opinion scales. The shortened titles of these seven opinion scales were responsibilities, adjustments, discipline, development, children, parenting, and parent education. Multiple-choice responses were provided for the 79 items on the questionnaire.Results of the study revealed that high school students in Coles County held favorable opinions about children, parenting, child rearing, and parent education. No unfavorable opinions were expressed. Respondents' opinions concerning the seven opinion scales and ranging from most favorable to least favorable in rank order were responsibilities; adjustments; development; children; parenting; parent education; and discipline.Opinions about alternative actions when teenage pregnancy or parenthood occurred revealed these findings. Fifty-six percent of the students felt they would like the assistance of both sets of parents in the decision making process if a guy and gal had been dating and the girl became pregnant. An average of 46% of the respondents indicated they felt the couple should marry and rear the child. Respondents felt the father should assume primary financial support for the child and the mother should work part time as well as complete high school.Eighty percent of the students indicated they felt competent to perform 19 of the 20 child care tasks. The least competence was felt in the feeding of infants.Those respondents who babysat for one or more hours each week outside the home held more favorable opinions about parent education than those who did not babysit outside the home.The affect that the respondents' sex, grade level, size of family of orientation, and parental status had upon their opinions about parenting was examined. Families' opinions about parenting were more favorable than males. Grade level did not affect students' opinions on six opinion scales. On the scale of discipline, tenth grade students held the most favorable opinions and twelfth grade students held the least favorable opinions. Size of family of orientation influenced only the adjustment opinion scale, but no pattern emerged from the data.Concerning parent education at the secondary school level, no difference was found between male and female opinions. Grade level and size of family did not affect students' opinions about parent education.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD