Families: Influences in Children’s Development and Behaviour, From Parents and Teachers’ Point of View

Abstract

Family plays a very important role in infant’s development and behaviour, being that the parents’ divorce can be a very stressful experience. This is an exploratory and comparative study that aims at identifying the differences in children’s behaviour with divorced parents (or separated) and married parents (or living together), based on the parents and the teachers’ perceptions. The authors recruited a convenience sample of 62 children (30 with single parents, and 32 children with married parents) between six and nine years old. To evaluate the parents’ perceptions about their children’s behaviour, the Portuguese versions of the CBCL (Child Behaviour Check List) and the TRF (Teacher Report Form) for the teachers’ perceptions were used. According to the results obtained, teachers indicate single parents’ children as having more behavioural problems in two different dimensions than children with married parents; single parents’ children without siblings are pointed out as having more behavioural problems than the ones who do not, by their parents and the more spaced the visits of the father are, in single parents’ children, more behavioural problems they have, according to the mothers. Therefore, based on our results, teachers and parents indicate that divorce has a negative impact on children’s behaviours.