The Relationship of Parental Anxiety and Parental Competence Conditioned by Social Expectations

Аннотация

The paper deals with the issue of parent-child relationship conditioned by the quality of parental competence. Most of the problems arising in the relations between parents and children result from the lack of parental competence. Parental incompetence includes mistaken parental expectations, which lead to increased parental anxiety. Parents expect their children to demonstrate more rapid development, staid and consistent behaviour, autonomy combined with total obedience to grown-ups. The results of empiric study provide the evidence of high levels of parental responsibility and a focus on requirements and expectations of the social milieu. At the same time the emotional component of parenting is constrained. The disproportionate increase of the cognitive component together with the decreased significance of parental feelings and emotional intimacy with the child may lead in such families to coldness and alienation in child-parent relations, to gradual increase of anxiety on the part of both the parents and the child.