The peculiarities of perception and upbringing of a child by parents and grandparents

Context and relevance. It is the family, first of all, that provides the child with a sense of security, is an important factor in the child's socialization, and demonstrates social norms and rules of behavior. In addition to the parents, the grandparents, who are also part of the child's immediate environment, actively contribute to the development of the child. Objective. To identify the peculiarities of the child's perception and upbringing by parents and grandparents. Hypothesis. The peculiarities of parents' perception and upbringing of a child have their own distinctive features, in comparison with the grandparents, in terms of freer acceptance of the child's ways of self-expression, emotional attitude towards him, and the structure of parental love. Methods and materials. The study involved 54 respondents (26 parents, 28 grandparents) with a child/grandchild aged 3 to 10 years, living in the Sverdlovsk region. The peculiarities of the child's perception and upbringing were assessed using a battery of questionnaires (the Parental Attitude Test Questionnaire (A.Ya. Varga, V.V. Stolin), the Family Education Strategy methodology by S.S. Stepanov (modified by I.I. Makhonina), the parental Love and Sympathy questionnaire (R.V. Ovcharova)). Results. The results showed that parents need a more tangible biological connection with their child than grandparents. They are also more likely to limit the responsibility and independence of the child due to the adoption of the distinctive features of the child in the form of emotional and social immaturity. For the grandparents, a characteristic feature is disagreement with the accompanying transformations in the life of their grandchildren, experiencing questionable feelings for this reason. Also, grandparents are more likely than parents to adopt parenting styles in which grandchildren are given less strict treatment, requirements, and responsibilities, while not taking into account the possible consequences of this, or limiting their involvement to a minimum, thereby planning to make grandchildren more independent. Conclusions. It is shown that the system of parenting activities of the grandparents complements the educational impact of the mother and father by applying a different approach to interacting with the child, forming a respectful attitude towards parents by providing him with his opinion on the parental efforts made to create favorable conditions for growth and development.