Giving mothers and fathers their words: what parents do thinks about their educational effectiveness and families’ needs

Abstract

Families in crisis, parents that are absent, distracted, prone to delegate, that do not meet their responsibilities and are unable to set limits and rules for their children: the negative stereotype of “family unable to educate” seems well established and socially shared by many operators of facilities for early childhood. To avoid judgmental attitudes that may further weaken the educational role of families and hinder the development of a cooperative relationship, so that develops mutual distrust between teachers / teachers and parents, this research aim to understand the perspectives of parents on a number of elements characterizing the "daily life of education" in the family. With the detection carried out through focus groups and questionnaires, we tried to focus on the perspectives of parents of children ages 0-6, on some issues including: what gets stuck and obstacts the parental governance; how functions are shared by the pair; the coordinates of the social network that can support families in their task; the state of health of the educational relationship; what is commonly assumed for “good education”.