Mothers evaluation of childrearing practices in two brazilian contexts

Abstract

This study aims at describing different conceptions and practices adopted by high-school educated mothers from two presumed different contexts when educating their two-to-seven year old children. Two instruments of data collection were used to obtain that: a) identification approach, b) an approach considering the family and child-rearing and following this, the adaptation of a third approach “The Restructuring rule of Biasoli-Alves and Graminha”. The last to be applied in the form of a questionnaire. The participants are described as the following: 50 women (college graduates) with stable marital status and with children between the ages of 2 – 7 years old. The participants were selected from a city in the state of São Paulo (25 mothers) and 25 from a capital city in the Northeast of Brazil. Those participants were selected from post-graduate courses lato sensu in private universities. They had previously signed a Term of Free Consentment form, after which they were submitted to a recorded interview. This was done using the two approaches and later, a questionnaire was given to be answered. For data analysis, the interviews were transcribed and the answers given categorized according to the quantitative-interpretative system. The results show that the influence of the cultural context in educational practices for the children may be less evident due to the higher influence of the educational level.