Child-rearing Attitude of Foster and Biological Mothers: A Comparative Study

Sixty mothers (30 foster and 30 biological mothers) having children in two age groups, that is 0–3 and 3–6 years were assessed on 8 child-rearing attitudes namely, acceptance-rejection (AR), dominance-submission (DS), encouragement-discouragement (KD), love-hate (LH), democracy-authoritarianism (DA), trust-distrust (ID), reward-punishment (RP) and tolerance-hostility (TH) taken from the Parent Child Relationship (PCR) lest. The two-way analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the foster and biological mothers on the acceptance-rejection (AR) and love-hate (LH) dimension with no significant impact of the two age groups of children whereas no significant difference was obtained for the dimension of dominance-submission (DS): encouragement-discouragement (ED): reward-punishment (RP); trust-distrust (TD) and tolerance-hostility (TH) Furthermore, for the dimension of democratic-authoritarianism (DA), the results showed a significant impact of the two age groups of children on the attitude of both the foster and biological mothers. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.