GARANTÍAS DE SEGURIDAD (A.F. 4)

The G1 category is used to elicit parents‘ experiences of caring for children in the home. It aims to identify parents‘ awareness of their children‘s activities. It is known that domestic activities might be influenced by family culture, social status and other factors such as cultural parenting.

Before moving on to explore parents‘ responses it is important to note the childcare scenarios underlying the questions within this category, as this might help to

understand parents‘ responses. To encourage parents to be aware of children‘s

activities this category includes some of the following scenarios:

Children like to explore. Despite the differences in children‘s ages we expect

that parents are aware at some level that children learn mostly through exploration, and that this child‘s activity might lead to a fall or other more serious accidents.

The parent usually knows the cause of the child‘s pain. We expect parents to

recall circumstances or situations in which the child has had a bad experience, either through of illness or due to an accident; have parents struggled to identify why the child was crying?

Children are not with their parents all of the time. Sometimes parents need to

attend to some household tasks and perhaps leave children in a different home space.

We expect that if parents are aware that children sometimes undertake risky activity or if parents are aware of missing any significant experience of the child (either achievement or accident) because they are not always with the child, then they might perceive technology as a useful tool to help capture those moments.

Returning to the survey analysis, the first exploration considers overall scores to G1 (figure 6.4). It can be seen that 25% of the responses were reserved: ―undecided‖ or

―disagree‖. We could therefore conclude that parents are aware of children‘s

activities and so they might be receptive to technology assisting with some levels of parenting awareness.

Figure 6.4 Score densities to the “aware of children’s activities” category

To explore what might underlie the ―undecided‖ and ―disagree‖ responses we analyse responses to each question within this category (table 6-7). We could observe

that questions G, ―When my child visits the GP I usually know what the source of the child‟s pain is‖, and M, ―When I am cooking my child is often in a different room‖,

are the troublesome questions, i.e. the questions with the lowest scores, and also that

questions M and A, ―Very active children are the ones that often undertake risky

activities‖ have the highest variance, 1.16 and 0.91 respectively.

ID Question/measure Mean Var SD SDA DA UN AG SAG

A Active-children/risky activity 3.8 0.9052 0.9514 0% 15% 10% 55% 20%

B Parent‘s awareness to active children

4.25 0.5131 0.7163 0% 5% 0% 60% 35%

D Children like to explore 4.7 0.3263 0.5712 0% 0% 5% 20% 75%

G Parents know any child‘s happening

3.55 0.8921 0.9445 0% 15% 30% 40% 15%

M Parent-cooking/Child in

different room

3.3 1.1648 1.0809 0% 35% 10% 45% 10%

Table 6-7 Variability of responses for the “aware of children activities” category

Why does this group include a degree of variability? Is there something related to the scope used for questions? Are the situations of individual parents different from what is explored within this category? We now explore, therefore, what might have

Question A asks if only very active children undertake risky activities. For instance, those children who like to climb and jump everywhere, who like to explore inside electric sockets or who are curious about the cooker knobs. Thus, ―undecided‖ and

―disagree‖ scores could possibly indicate that parents consider that any child might

eventually be exposed to risky activity. Have those parents had any bad experiences with their children? A less ambiguous question might have been whether all children sometimes undertake risky activity.

Question G considers the scenario in which the child is ill or has had an accident, and in the context of visiting the doctor invites parents to answer a question typically asked by a GP: ―How did it happen?‖ We assumed that within this context parents could consider how technology might help them to record, for example, a child‘s accident. However, the fact that 45% of the responses were a reserved position

(―Undecided‖ or ―Disagree‖), makes us wonder whether this is an issue of question

wording. It might be also that the scenario used for this question conflicts with the

parents‘ experiences, e.g. parents with very young children may never have visited a

GP with their child. Both are important issues and are further explored in section 6.4.1.

Question M considers scenarios in which parents are situated, for example, cooking and looking after their children. The assumption here was that when parents are cooking, children are typically left watching the TV or playing in a different room. However, it appears that there are other criteria parents might use to decide where and when children have to be placed in a different room. One possibility is that parents do not consider the kitchen to be a risky room for young children if the parent is present, or that some safety measures can be put in place in order to make the kitchen safe. It might be that parents prefer to keep children close to them. If so, is the child‘s age a factor influencing the attitude of parents?

In considering responses to G1 in terms of the child‘s age groups (figure 6.5) we can see that those parents with the youngest children are the ones with more variable responses to the G1 questions. Parents with children under two years have the most uncertain attitudes; they have the highest variance. So, is there something in common

Figure 6.5 Responses to “aware of children’s activities” by child’s age group

Although we are not in a position to make broad generalizations, in considering the response distributions for each group we would argue that the younger the child the greater the uncertainty about some aspects of parental awareness. As we suggested above, it seems that if the child is still a baby with no walking or talking skills, then a parent might be uncertain about what level of awareness might be needed in her own situation.

We could summarize this section by arguing that parents were asked to think about how aware they need to be when caring for their children in the home. The degree of awareness might be associated with the age and development of the child, their physical and psychological skills, and the particular care given by each parent. Two of the responses from parents to the open question that relates to the social contexts explored for G1, are given below:

“Your house should be safe enough for children to explore or you should

keep them closer.”

“Some children do not leave parents alone to do anything.”

There surely exists other social scenarios which might influence parental attitudes, but which lie outside the scope of this exploration. Section 6.4 investigates possible

links between ―troublesome‖ questions and individual attitudes.

The next section explores whether or not parents consider that technology-based tools could help with childcare tasks.