Impact of Women’s Education Level and Employment Status on Parent-Child Relationship – A Case Study of Ludhiana city

Abstract

The present study was undertaken exclusively at Ludhiana city to assess and compare parent-child relationship among families with employed and non-employed women across different educational levels. The sample comprised of 300 (N=300) Sikh families distributed equally according to the working status of woman in the family that is families with employed women (n1=150) and families with non-employed women (n2= 150). The families with employed and non-employed women were selected by drawing equal numbers of families (n 1i , n 2i = 50) from each of the three levels of education (with reference to woman in the family) viz., post graduation and above (Level I), upto graduation (Level II) and matric and below excluding illiterate (Level III). A socio-demographic questionnaire was used to identify families for the sample under study. Parent-child relationship in the selected families was evaluated using Parent-Child Relationship Scale (Rao, 1989). Arithmetic mean, standard deviation and t-test were used to analyse the data. From the analysis it was found that fathers' and mothers' protective, rejecting and loving nature and use of symbolic reward was uninfluenced by mothers' educational level and employment status. So was mothers' indifferent attitude, but, fathers possessed highly indifferent attitude when mothers were non- employed and educated upto Level III. Demanding attitude, symbolic punishment and object reward was observed to be high and object punishment significantly low among fathers and mothers in families where mothers were educated upto Level I or Level II. Fathers were highly neglecting when mothers were educated only upto Level III. It was also noticed that fathers and mothers were more demanding and used more object reward and children were neglected most when mothers used to work outside.