CHALLENGES FOR AN EFFECTIVE EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN FAMILY AND ECEC SERVICES IN ROMANIAN CONTEXT

Abstract

Parents are the primary agents of socialization and hold the great influence on child behaviour in early childhood, considered to be a crucial period of socialization. The family type and the parenting styles have significant influence on socialization process. Although the notion of socialization became less central to sociological debates, the idea of families having a major role in primary socialization process is still quite central (Gillies, 2011). The present paper analyses the factors affecting socialization of children in Romanian families. The first part of the paper will be dedicated to a review of literature regarding the influence of the family in the socialization process of children. In the second part the author will present the results of a study case conducted in Bucharest in 2015 using a research methodology based on PAPI questionnaire with parents having children between 0 and 6 years enrolled in ECEC services. The analysis will focus on manner of exercising parenting styles in Romanian family. The factors affecting socialization of children will be also highlighted according to the data form the field survey. The results have implications for researchers, policy makers and practitioners from the family policy area.

Headnote

Abstract: Parents are the primary agents of socialization and hold the great influence on child behaviour in early childhood, considered to be a crucial period of socialization. The family type and the parenting styles have significant influence on socialization process. Although the notion of socialization became less central to sociological debates, the idea of families having a major role in primary socialization process is still quite central (Gillies, 2011). The present paper analyses the factors affecting socialization of children in Romanian families. The first part of the paper will be dedicated to a review of literature regarding the influence of the family in the socialization process of children. In the second part the author will present the results of a study case conducted in Bucharest in 2015 using a research methodology based on PAPI questionnaire with parents having children between 0 and 6 years enrolled in ECEC services. The analysis will focus on manner of exercising parenting styles in Romanian family. The factors affecting socialization of children will be also highlighted according to the data form the field survey. The results have implications for researchers, policy makers and practitioners from the family policy area.

Keywords: ECEC services, childhood, child development, family, work life balance policies.

1. ECEC Services, Parenting Styles and Socialization of Children

The concept of educational partnership between family and ECEC (early childhood education and care) services system aims to become a central one for social policy, flexible and open to educational problems. Building an effective educational partnership between family and ECEC services should take into account the variety of parenting styles. Researchers have found a strong positive relationship between parent - initiated involvement practices and children outcomes (Epstein et al., 2009; Hess and Holloway, 1984).

Parents are the primary agents of socialization and hold the great influence on child behaviour in early childhood, considered to be a crucial period of socialization. The family type and the parenting styles have significant influence on socialization process. Although the notion of socialization became less central to sociological debates, the idea of families having a major role in primary socialization process is still quite central (Gillies, 2011). The way parents take care of their children impacts on the latter's personality development and their ways of interacting with social and close relations.

The parental style is very influential in children's development. Researchers have developed the concept of parenting styles to describe the interaction between parents and their children during the socialization process. Baumrind's model of parenting styles is the most influential framework that has been proposed for classifying styles of parenting. In the 1960s, Diana Baumrind was interested in the different ways that parents attempted to control or socialize their kids. She identified three patterns of parenting styles based upon two aspects of parenting behaviour: control and warmth. Parental control refers to the degree to which parents manage their children's behaviour-from being very controlling to setting few rules and demands. Parental warmth refers to the degree to which parents are accepting and responsive of their children's behaviour as opposed to being unresponsive and rejecting. When the two aspects of parenting behaviour are combined in different ways, three primary parenting styles emerge:

Baumrind's studies established that elementary-aged children of authoritative parents display adaptive levels of self-reliance and self-esteem, and socially responsible, independent, and achievement-oriented behaviour; children with authoritarian parents display relatively less independent behaviour and lower levels of self-reliance and selfesteem; and children with permissive parents display less positive behaviour and selfreliance but high levels of self-esteem.

Later, researchers added a fourth parenting style, uninvolved parenting. Maccoby and Martin (1983) analysed adolescents aged 14-18 in four areas: psychosocial development, school achievement, internalized distress, and problem behaviour. The study found that those with neglectful parents scored the lowest on these tests, while those with authoritative parents scored the highest. The uninvolved parenting style is low in parental responsiveness (the nurturing aspect of the child) and low in parental demandingness (control over the child). Routinely these parents are too busy or self-involved to support their child in school functions, teach life skills and encourage socially acceptable behaviour.

A growing number of research has proven repeatedly that parenting styles have a direct correlation with the children development. Ensuring the best possible outcome for children requires parents to face the challenge of creating a best partnership with ECEC services. It is important for family policy-makers to help new parents in adopting appropriate parenting techniques and strategies to ensure that children receive guidance that will best allow them to succeed in later life.

2. Development of ECEC Services in Romania

After a very long period of being a predominantly private (family issue), the care of very young children is now becoming, in significant degree, an out-of-home activity in which governments are increasingly involved.

Since 2006, a series of European policy documents and events have highlighted the importance of quality ECEC provision. In the Communication on equity and efficiency in European education and training systems (2006) the European Commission highlighted that "pre-primary education has the highest rates of return of the whole lifelong learning continuum, especially for the most disadvantaged, and the results of this investment build up over time." The European Commission acknowledged that the investment in ECEC is not a sufficient condition: in order to offset disadvantage throughout the education system, pre-primary programmes need to be followed up with subsequent interventions, such as support for language learning and social adjustment, otherwise their beneficial effects tend to decay.

The European Commission has set out the priorities for early childhood education and care with the aim of improving access to and the quality of services from birth to the start of compulsory schooling. Work on this started in 2012 in cooperation with international organisations and stakeholders. A number of priorities have been set: promoting the most effective use of European funding, developing policy guidance, developing more European data and research. By 2020 at least 95% of pre-school children of 4 years or older should participate in early childhood education. Countries' improvements in relation to the target are monitored on a yearly basis. EU countries are currently developing methods to monitor the quality of early childhood schooling and care. These efforts are coordinated by the Thematic Working Groups for Schools policy.

Within the Strategic Framework for European Cooperation in Education and Training (ET 2020), the Member States agreed that high quality early childhood education is one of the ways to address the educational disadvantage. Furthermore, it was perceived as a foundation for later educational success, especially in the case of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The provision of formal childcare services is an important indicator of work family balance. Due to the increased participation of women with children in paid work, demand for regulated childcare services has been increasing in all over the Europe.

What has Romania managed to accomplish so far regarding ECEC system development? The most profound change in Romania, like in other new Member States, has been the transition from communist regime to market economy. Formally, childcare for children from birth to school age was highly subsidized. In the process of transition to the market economy many of these services were closed down. Thereby a lack of childcare places has emerged and those that still exist are often expensive for parents, especially childcare from the private sector (Matei, 2014).

The main childcare facilities in Romania for children between 0-6(7) years are nurseries (day-care centres for children between the ages of three months and three years), kindergartens, and day care centres. These facilities remain dominated by public financing and provision. Official records reveal that the number of children aged three months to three years in public crèches declined from 47,239 in 1990 to 18,551 by 2013 (INS, 2013). Assessment made in 2010 on Barcelona target regarding access to childcare services showed that Romania did not achieve the Barcelona objectives: in 2010 the gross enrolment rate of children in nurseries was 2.7 (well below the target of 33%) and the gross enrolment rate for children in kindergartens was 81.8%.

3. Challenges for an Effective Educational Partnership between Family and ECEC Services: Results from Empirical Research

3.1. Methodological issues

In order to set up the main challenges for an effective educational partnership between family and ECEC services, a survey was conducted in Bucharest during May-June 2015. The objective of the survey was to identify different parenting styles and strategies for an effective educational partnership between family and ECEC services. The null hypothesis tested was: H0: Parenting styles influence the relationship between families and ECEC services.

A stratified random sample was used to collect data from 1021 parents with children between 0-6 years that had children enrolled in ECEC system (nurseries and kindergartens). Because of the difficulty of data collection process (mainly caused by reduced availability of parents to respond to the questionnaire) three techniques were used for data collection: PAPI (paper and pencil interviewing), CATI (computer-assisted personal interviewing), and CAWI (computer-assisted web interviewing).

3.2. Results

The families in contemporary societies have undergone profound changes in recent decades. The changes that have occurred within the family are so significant that the term family has become increasingly ambiguous, tending to cover different realities today. How the today's parents exercise parental roles within the family? Data collected through field survey conducted in Bucharest show that most parents share the duties of caring and educating children, the percentage increasing with the age of child.

However, over a half of the respondents expressed strongly agreement and agreement with the statement "Within the family, the mother is the main person responsible for raising and educating children" this issue reflecting in a great extent the real behaviour in managing parental roles within the family in Romania.

30.3 % from the interviewed persons expressed strongly agreement and agreement with the statement "Father should be more authoritative towards children in the family compared to mother", the percentage reflecting the authoritarian father's role in the family.

The main parenting styles practiced by the respondents participating in the quantitative research in Bucharest were the authoritative style (52.1%), followed by the authoritarian style (18.9%). The permissive parenting style was practiced by only 7% from the total population investigated, but if we consider the high percentage obtained for the category "undefined parenting style49" associated in extremis with the reduced involvement of the parent in the education of his child, the percentage of parents practicing the permissive parenting style could by higher.

Strategies aimed to streamline the educational partnership between family and ECEC systems (nurseries/ kindergartens) must take as starting point the quality of services offered within the institutions concerned, particularly those services directly related to the child's family.

Collected data show that, in Bucharest, both the quality of collaboration services with the child's family and the quality of psychological counselling services offered to parents are higher in the case of kindergartens as compared with nurseries, aspects validated by the focus groups also (conducted with personnel working in nurseries and kindergartens from the public and private sector).

In the case of nurseries the quality of collaboration services with the child's family was "very good" and "good" in 84.2% of the cases. But the quality of psychological counselling services offered to parents was "very good" and "good" only in 36.8% of the cases. For kindergartens the quality of collaboration services with the child's family was "very good" and "good" in 89.9% of the cases. The percentage for the quality of psychological counselling services offered to parents was perceived as "very good" and "good" only in 39.6% of the cases, but the percentage is higher than in the case of nurseries.

A greater openness towards parents from the staff working in education and care institutions (nurseries/ kindergartens) is another aspect that needs to be taken into account so that the educational partnership between family and ECEC services become more efficient. 30.8% of parents having children enrolled in nurseries feel the need for more frequent discussions with the nursery staff. 93.2% of them certified that the teaching staff is opened for discussions with the parents and 85.7% certified that the medical personnel is also opened for such discussions. When we consider kindergartens 20.4% of parents having children enrolled in these institutions feel the need for more frequent discussions with the kindergarten staff. 94.7% of them certified that the teaching staff is opened for discussions with the parents and 80.2% certified that the medical personnel is also opened for such discussions.

4. Conclusions

Results indicate the importance of positive relationships and open communication as components of an effective educational partnership between family and ECEC services. The ECEC system should be designed to ensure that parents can access early childhood care and education every time they need as they balance the care of their children with their decisions to participate on the labour market.

The findings from the field research have implications for policy makers and practitioners from the ECEC area. Building an effective educational partnership between family and ECEC services should take into account the variety of parenting styles. It is important for family policy-makers to support new parents in adopting appropriate parenting techniques and strategies to ensure that children receive guidance that will best allow them to succeed in later life.

Footnote

49 Although an authoritative parenting style is related to positive developmental outcomes, many parents likely use a mixture of different parenting styles when parenting children. Parents may modify their individual parenting style to fit particular circumstances.

50 The parenting style questions are embedded in the questionnaire in a random order. The measure consists of items for each of the different styles of parenting in a five point Likert format ranging from strongly agree to disagree.

References

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