Relationship between creativity and parenting among preschool children

Parenting is potentially a prominent process which affects child’s biophysical, psychological, social, and spiritual development. According to researches parenting styles have a crucial role in children’s development(Holden& Edwards,1989;Baumrind,1991;Darling&Steinberg,1993;Chao,1994;Paulson,1994;Lorenz,Hoven,Andrews&Bird,1995;Reissetal.1995;Palmer&Hollin,1996;Radziszewska,Richardson,Dent&Flay,1996;Holdren,1997,Querido,Warner,&Eyberg,2002;Sabbatini,&Leaper,2004;Dixon,Hamilton-Giachritis& Browne,2005) .

Due to the fact that parents are the first people who interact with children in the environment, parenting style is considered to be an important factor in children’s growth (Steinberg, Elmen, & Mounts, 1989; Pratt, 1988; Xie, 1996). since it has impact on various dimensions of child development such as physical, cognitive , emotional, social and language development.

Unfortunately, many parents lack information on how to provide a good home environment and how to use good parenting practices to encourage their children’s abilities. Teachers and other childhood professionals are key resource persons who can disseminate information to parents and encourage parents to choose effective parenting style. It is a well -known fact that parenting styles set the environmental and emotional context for children’s development.

Many writers have noted that specific parenting practices are less important in predicting child well-being than is the broad pattern of parenting. Most researchers who try to describe this broad parental setting rely on Diana Baumrind’s concept of parenting style. The construct of parenting style is used to

capture normal variations in parents’ attempts to control and socialize their children (Baumrind, 1991). Diana Baumrind (1966) was the first researcher who made lots of effort in researching about the conception of parenting style and its various types; she classified parenting style into three types of authoritarian, permissive and authoritative.

the authoritarian parenting style is characterized by being highly challenging and less responsive. The authoritarian parent is inflexible, rough, and demanding. Coarse parents usually fall in this category (It is worth saying that Baumrind added the point that not all authoritarian parents are abusive) (Diana Baumrind 1966).

permissive parents are less taxing however highly responsive. The permissive parent is excessively responsive to the child’s needs in the way that they rarely apply orderly rules. The outcome of permissive parenting would usually be the spoiled child (Diana Baumrind’s 1966).

Children are all born with certain set of characteristics and abilities which may be cultivated based on the surrounding environment. Creativity is among these characteristics and since each child is born with the instinctive ability to be creative, all children have the right to be given the opportunity to discover, use and nurture this inborn gift. All children have capacity to be creative and children should have the opportunity to show their ability to be creative (Torrance 1970). Hence parents must create an atmosphere conducive to develop creativity.

Definitions of creativity are not straightforward and limited so that we come across various writers contributing to the disputation about the constitution of creativity with different views. However most theorists come to the same point that the creative process in all its different definitions share some common aspects which are imagination, originality, productivity, problem solving and the ability to create an outcome of value and worth hence creativity can be defined as a process of thinking and responding that is engaged with connecting with our prior experience, making response to incentives (objects, ideas, symbols, people, situations) and bring into being at least one unique combination. E. Paul Torrance (1997), one of the leading researchers in the field of creativity, defined creativity as “the process of sensing problems, forming ideas, and deriving unprecedented solutions of unique problems with elaboration and embellishment”.

The study of creativity in young children has been approached form different point of views. There has been several investigations examining parental and family influences on preschoolers ‘creativity . Bomba ,Moran, and Goble(1991) organized a study on children and their parents to explore the relationship between familial style and preschoolers ‘creative potential. Findings revealed that children of families who were flexible in their family structure got higher scores on a creativity test.

Statement of Problem

The parents and learning environment during early childhood have great impact on child outcomes .There are evidences that show how parents can influence on children such as family income, parents’occupatios and parents education. Infect parents are influential person through of the child’s life. They have essential task to teach children new skills and who are the first teachers. There are several styles that parents chose during the parenting and each one has particular influence on children. Baumrid was the first researcher that use parenting style concept and other research until now show that significant effect parenting style on all aspect of child outcomes.

Therefore awareness of how and what influences parenting style is significant when researches have shown relationship between parenting style and positive and negative children outcomes. Negative outcomes including: eating disorders, aggression, low academic performance, depression and positive outcome such as high academic achievement, self esteem. The problem being addressed in this study is to investigate the relationship between parenting style and creativity level of Iranian preschool children live in Malaysia.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a727330303&db=all

early education and children outcomes 2005

nfluences of parents’ education on their children’s educational attainments: the role of parent and child perceptions 

Purpose of study

The major purpose of this study is to explore relationship between parenting style [namely authoritative, authoritarian and permissive] and creativity among preschool children.

The second purpose of study is that provides information to parents on the effects of their styles on creativity and their children’s performance in creativity. It provides information about the creativity level of Iranian preschool children as well as provides information about parenting style in Iranian students.

There are some reasons to show this study is useful : first reason is that recently there is more focus on child development than before and that parents must be more educated about their parenting styles .Second reason is that the researches show lack of awareness of parents about parenting styles they choose which has direct influence on the child outcomes .For the third reason, the findings will help professionals and educators in early childhood area to design suitable programs to parents in order to enhance their knowledge about parenting and parenting styles .

Research questions

The research questions for this study are as follows:

Is there any relationship between authoritative Iranian parents and their child ‘creativity?

Is there any relationship between authoritarian Iranian parents and their child ‘creativity?

Is there any relationship between permissive Iranian parents and their

child ‘creativity?

Limitation of study

In this study only Iranian parents in Malaysia will be used as sample since I am Iranian and my concern is to inform the Iranian parents how their parenting style will influence their children creativity.

The second limitation is the questionnaire is in English language.

Third, this study is carry out in public Iranian preschool.

Operational definitions

The following concepts were nominally defined for this study:

Parenting style: Parenting is a complicated set of activities which involves much particular behaviour that work independently and collectively to affect child outcomes. Parenting has such a significant role in child’s life that determines the nature of children s following life and even their future parenting styles. (Geary&Flinn, 2001; Keller, 2001). Darling and Steinberg (1993) define a parenting style as the emotional climate in which parents raise their children.

Darling and Steinberg defined parenting style as:

A constellation of attitudes toward the child that are communicated to the child and that taken together, create an emotional climate in which the parent’s behaviors are expressed. These behaviors include both the specific, goal-directed behaviors through which parents perform their paternal duties and non-goal-directed parental behaviors, such as gestures, changes in tone of voice, or the spontaneous expression of emotion.(Darling&Stenberg,1993,p.3).

Diana Baumrind conducted an interview with parents of preschool children and observed the interaction between parents and children and based on the result she believed that parenting styles have two important dimensions (Baumrind,1971,1978,1989). The first one was”parental responsiveness” and the second one was “parental demandigness”. Parental responsiveness refers to parent’s consideration on child’s needs. Parental demandiingness refers to the demands which are made by parents on their children to become unified into the family and the society. She described parenting style in three categories: authoritarian, authoritative and permissive .

Authoritarian parenting style:

Authoritarian parenting style is described with high demandingness but low responsiveness. Authoritarian parents do not express ideas or reasons behind their rules for their children and children have to follow the rules unconditionally. Attitude of these parents is that the child must do whatever they say. The authoritarian parents communicate less with their children and they use punishment if the children do not accept the rules.

Authoritative parenting style:

Authoritative parenting style is the most appropriate method with the best outcomes .Parents have moderate demanding and moderate responsiveness. They have reasonable requests to child, they show love and affection, and they listen to child’s views, they encourage children to be independent. Authoritative parents explain to the child the reasoning behind their rules and control. (Baumrind,1966)

Permissive parenting style:

Permissive parenting style is described with high responsiveness however low demandingness .Permissive parents tend to give more freedom to children and less control, guidance and punishment. The child can do whatever she or he wants unconditionally. children of permissive parents show traits such as low self-esteem and lack of independency.

Creativity

Several experts define creativity in many various ways and each researcher has his own definition on creativity and in highest number of definitions, creativity is making new thing, originality, unusual, unexpected, valuable etc.(preschool education book).

Torrance’s definition of creativity (1974):

A process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying the difficult; searching for solutions, making guesses or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies; testing and retesting these hypotheses and possibly modifying and retesting them; and finally communicating the results (p.8).

Preschool children

Based on Malaysian curriculum, children between 4 to 6 is located under preschool

Methodology

This research is a quantitative study and the data will collate by questioners.

Instrumentation:

The instrument used in this study will be TCAM ( Torrance 1981) to measur creativity in preschool children and will also use a version of the parenting styles and Dimensions Questionnaire(PSDQ) (Robinson, Mandelco, Olsen, & Hart, 2001) to collect data. Method analysing data is by the quantitative data analysis .Spss version 17 will be used in this study.

Sample

A total of 100 Iranian parents in Kuala Lumpur (50 females and 50 males) and 50 preschool children from Iran will be included in this study.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20056147/