engleski

Strengthening Families to Prevent Violence Against Children

One of the primary focus of family research are family problems and failing in fulfilling their functions. There are not many researches focused on functional families, which could provide an answer to a question how to make families more functional. The aforementioned area of research is partly unexplored in Croatia. Parent-child relations can influence overall child development, child’s attitudes, peer relations and behavior. Parents are not born with parental skills ; these skills are gained through everyday life with children, spouse, through learning and other social interactions. Article presents results of research project “Pedagogical aspects of family relations”, which is supported by University of Rijeka. First part of the research project was longitudinal study of pedagogical aspects of family relations on probabilistic sample of parents, pre-adolescent and adolescent children. Conceptual framework for measuring were three central dimensions: cohesion, flexibilty and communication was used in the research (Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems, Olson 2003). On the scale of family cohesion, results showed unbalanced family relations – extremely high and extremely low cohesion. On the scale of communication between parents and children also emerged two extremely different groups, one with poor and inadequate communication and other with high levels of communication skills. The second part of the research project was to examine self- perception of parenting satisfaction regarding child- upbringing patterns. Results showed that subjective perspective of parenting have great role in family well-functioning as well in parents- children relations (N=350 parents of children aged 3-6). Results of both parts of research project emphasize the importance of strengthening families. Primary prevention against domestic violence include encouraging positive communication, development of parental and communication skills, as well as encouraging child’s development. In the modern social system that is challenging for individuals, there is a need for family relations strengthening.

children, parenthood, primary violence prevention, strengthening families

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