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Child Rearing Investigations

Decent Essays

Assessment Four: Influences and Changes in Child Rearing Investigation

Primary Question: How have children’s leisure time activities & toys changed over the last 30 years?

There are a few obvious changes between today’s leisure activities and activities from over thirty years ago. In a short questionnaire given to a mother and a grandmother, there were differences, but there were also similarities and parallels. As the sample size was so small, many of the answers could be biased or generalised for the generations, and given the locations that the grandmother raised her children, the answers will most likely vary to other answers given by other parents if asked in a survey.

Questionnaire Results

1. What leisure time activities were there …show more content…

The first response had one slightly more outgoing activity for their children (water skiing), and also mentioned the children taking part in family activities like picnics, and getting a visit once a year from the School of the Air teacher . The second response has more group activities that were likely done with other children of the same ages, like kindergym and story time at the library, as they were more social activities . However, the main similarity between the replies was that the first response mentioned occasionally visiting other children, while the second response had more social activities for their children, so they would have known other children better than the first response’s children. The second reply also mentioned a toy library. Children’s leisure time activities now relate to genders, socio-economic position and where they live. Girls have averaged to have less leisure time than boys and spending their free time doing different activities than boys, the difference greater in 2014 than it was 4-5 years before. Girls spent more time reading than boys and less time using computers, including video games …show more content…

bikes, TV/videos/dvds), but the second reply also had all of the ‘cool’ toys from that times as well, such as the swing set and the trampoline, and also had more modern toys like what mothers now would have, with dolls, lego and playdoh. The first reply also had something similar to the toy library (RICE – the Remote & Isolated Children’s Exercise) which sent them loan toys on a monthly basis. As they lived at Innamincka, they didn’t have TV reception so they didn’t have a great range of kid’s shows like the second mother would have had. Toys nowadays generally focus on the ability to help kids to develop in their cognitive developments, such as the sensorimotor stage, where children begin to develop an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor experience .

3. What do you think about leisure activities for children now compared to how/what it was when you were raising your children? (E.g. children’s TV shows, toys…)
In both replies, it mentions electronic devices/activities being the most significant change between now and when they raised their children. The first response says that what’s available now even in remote areas cannot compare with what there was before, while the second response says that there’s too much screen time and not enough human face to face contact, or time with children spending time with other

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