RESEARCH ARTICLE
Reflective Inquiry on Professionals’ Views on Parents and About Parenting
Ching Man Lam*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 7
First Page: 96
Last Page: 102
Publisher Id: TOFAMSJ-7-96
DOI: 10.2174/1874922401507010096
Article History:
Received Date: 23/10/2014Revision Received Date: 7/11/2014
Acceptance Date: 19/1/2015
Electronic publication date: 30/7/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distributin, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Although there are studies on attitudes and beliefs of parents in childrearing, there is a notable lack of studies on professionals’ attitudes and beliefs about parents and about parenting. This study examines both professionals’ views of parents and their attitudes and beliefs about parenting, and compares these attitudes and beliefs among different types of professionals. The results indicate that professionals involved in parent education hold a moderately negative view of parents despite being quite sympathetic to the stress experienced by parents. Findings also reveal an undue concern with parenting knowledge and skills. Differences between teachers and social workers were found in perceived stress of parents and perceived role of government. These findings provide an impetus to professionals, and to society at large, to reflect on the values and attitudes they have towards parents and the family.
