Effect of the subject and scene of communication with family members on children's sense of fulfillment

Abstract

A questionnaire study of elementary school children from the 4th to 6th grades was performed to investigate the role of not only the frequency of communication, but the subject matter of the communications at meal time with family members regarding their feeling of happiness. The questionnaire was composed of the mealtime details, frequency of communication with family members and their intimate feeling toward their parents and themselves. Significant differences were observed between the boys and girls regarding the answers to “Do you like cooking? ” and “Do you feel loneliness at school?” and between their grades at school regarding the answers to “Do you help with the cooking at home?”, “Do you feel loneliness at home?”, “Do you have a dream about what you will do in the future?” and “With whom do you usually have breakfast?” The children who lived with their grandparents felt a greater sense of fulfillment than those who lived with only their parents. Three factors, conversation, feeling of happiness and felling of loneliness, were extracted by a factor analysis using the Promax rotation technique. Pass model according to our hypothesis that communication with the family has a positive correlation with children's sense of fulfillment and respect for their parents, and has a negative correlation with their loneliness showed that the more children who had communication about various subjects with their family members, the more they respected their parents and had a sense of fulfillment. In addition, the best chance for children to have communication was shown to be at mealtime.