Family’s Social Climate and Support System in Rural Haryana

Abstract

KEYWORDS Communicate. Stimulation. Home environment. Social maturity. Preschoolers ABSTRACT The child learns the best lesson of citizenship between the kiss of the mother and the care of the father . The way in which the parents communicate with the child, the choice of words, the underlying ideas and values, the extent to which they give meaning to their experiences have a lasting impact in shaping the personality of the child. Lack of stimulation and an unresponsive environment can hamper children's overall development. In the present study, quality of home environment describes environmental stimulation provided by mothers to their children. In day to day life, mothers perform certain activities consciously or unconsciously which may become an effective stimulative channel for the development of children. The family's social climate and support system was judged by observing the home environment of the preschoolers using Mohite' s Home Environment Inventory. The results revealed that in case of language development, physical environment, variety in stimulation and discipline of children, mothers exposed their children to low level of stimulation. Moderate level stimulation was provided for encouraging social maturity among children. The poorest aspects were the physical environment and variety in stimulation, as almost none of the mothers provided high quality stimulation for these two aspects whereas in other aspects, high level stimulation was provided though by few mothers. From the above findings, it can be summarized that maternal contribution was of low quality as poor stimulation was provided by mothers.