AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
increases the number of young people who do not have a stable
partner at the age of 25 - 30 (the majority of their parents became
parents at this age) and this shortens the period of starting a
family at the age of the highest fertility.
2 Research of chosen aspects of parenthood and childlessness
from the point of view of three generations
2.1 The project of the research
Current frequent forms of family life (nonmarital childbearing,
single parents, homosexual partnerships) provoke many public
as well as professional discussions about their impact on the
performing of the parental role. Based on occurring changes in
the family life mentioned above, we aimed at finding the
opinions of the public on chosen aspects of parenthood in the
current family from the point of view of three generations. We
examined the parental role and we focused on three aspects: 1.
„legalization“ of the child with the marriage of parents
(parenthood and nonmarital family), 2. parenthood in the
alternative type of a family, 3. childlessness.
The aim of the research was: 1. to obtain the opinions of the
public on chosen aspects of parenthood and childlessness in the
current family from the point of view of three generations, 2. to
find out whether the age and belonging to a certain generational
group determines the opinions of respondents on chosen aspects
of parenthood and childlessness, i.e. to find out whether there
exists a statistically significant difference in opinions of
respondents on parenthood and childlessness from the aspect of
three generations.
For the needs of our research we set the following research
questions: 1. Is it necessary “to legalize the child” with the
marriage of parents? Does the society require so that the child is
born to married parents? 2. Are the traditional opinions on the
upbringing of children still dominant? Does the society connect
the upbringing and care about children mainly with the maternal
role? 3. Are there more frequent negative or positive opinions of
the public on the upbringing of children by single parents or
parents of the same gender? 4. Is the voluntary childlessness
evaluated negatively as an expression of egoism?
The research sample consisted of students of universities, their
parents and grandparents from different regions of Slovakia. The
total number of respondents was 333 and they were divided into
three groups. The first group was formed by 132 students of
universities, in the second group were 118 parents and the third
group consisted of 83 grandparents. In the set there were
represented respondents of both genders and all marital statuses,
coming from villages and towns and having a different level of
achieved education.
In order to obtain the research data we used a non-standardised
questionnaire - the same for all three research sets. The
questionnaire involved the Likert scale for measuring the
attitudes and opinions of the respondents with the aim to specify
their level of agreement or disagreement with the given
statements on a 5 - degree scale: 1 - I totally agree, 2 - I rather
agree, 3 - I cannot express myself, 4 - I rather disagree, 5 - I
totally disagree.
Based on the results of our research, we found out that the
opinions of respondents of the relevant generational groups
differ from each other. The aim of the statistical analysis was to
ascertain whether these differences are also statistically
significant, i.e. whether the answers of the respondents of three
groups to the particular statements are dependent on the
belonging of the respondents to their age group (students,
parents or grandparents). Therefore we tested the dependence of
two nominal characters A, B where the character A - the status of
the respondent - achieved three levels: a student, a parent or a
grandparent and the character B - represented possible answers
to the given statement.
In the statistical analysis of the obtained data there was used the
- test for verifying the independence of two qualitative
characters A, B. We tested the zero hypothesis
: the
characters A, B are independent versus the alternative hypothesis
: the characters A, B are dependent. The testing criterion is
the statistics
defined by the relation
=
,
where
are empirical numbers and
are forecast numbers.
We deny the tested hypothesis
at the level of significance
if the level of the tested criterion
exceeds the critical
level
(Markechová, Stehlíková, Tirpáková, 2011).
We performed the test by means of the programme
STATISTICA. In the output set of the programme we obtained
the contingent table, the value of the testing criterion
- test
and the value of p meaning the probability of a mistake we make
if we deny the tested hypothesis. If the calculated value of p is
relatively small (p< 0,05, resp. p< 0,01), we deny the tested
hypothesis
about the independence of the observed
characters A, B (at the level of significance 0,05 resp. 0,01). We
will evaluate the test on the basis of the calculated p-values and,
subsequently, we will present the results in the tables.
2.2 The analysis of the research results
Regarding the research aims mentioned above, in the analysis of
the research data we verified by means of
- test whether the
opinions of three groups of respondents about the given
statements are significantly different. Therefore we tested the
dependence of two nominal characters A, B where the character
A - the status of respondents - achieved three levels: a student, a
parent or a grandparent. The character B - answers to the
statement - achieved five levels (1 - I totally agree, 2 - I rather
agree, 3 = I cannot express myself, 4 - I rather disagree, 5 - I
totally disagree).
The first set of statements (No 1 – 2) was focused on the topic of
“legalization of the child“ with the aim to find out how it is
important for the respondents so that the parents get married
before the birth of the child. We tested the statistical significance
of differences in the opinions of respondents from particular
groups on the following statements:
1.
For the child it is not important whether the parents are
married or not.
2.
It is not important so that the parents get married before the
birth of the child.
We tested the statistical significance of the differences in the
answers of the respondents of three groups to the statements No
1 and No 2 by means of the
- test. The results are stated in
the Table 1.
Table 1 Results of the
- test
Statement
p
No 1
10,554
0,228
No 2
52,446
0,000
*
The values of probability p smaller than the stated level of
significance
are marked with an asterisk
in the
Table 1. Based on the results mentioned in the Table 1, we can
state that respondents of three groups answered to the statement
No 2 statistically differently, but they answered to the statement
No 1 without a statistical difference. When we were evaluating
the statement No 1, there was not evident a statistically
significant difference in the answers of respondents of three
generational groups. We found out a rather reluctant or rejecting
attitude in all three groups of respondents to the statement which
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