Parents’ Willingness and Perception of Children’s Autonomy as Predictors of Greater Independent Mobility to School
1
Faculty of Human Sciences and Education, Department of Psychology and Sociology, University of Zaragoza, Valentín Carderera, 4, 22003 Huesca, Spain
2
Faculty of Human Sciences and Education, Department of Mathematics, University of Zaragoza, Valentín Carderera, 4, 22003 Huesca, Spain
3
Faculty of Psychology, Department of Social Psychology, University of Valencia, Avda. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, 46010 Valencia, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(5), 732; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16050732
Received: 4 January 2019 / Revised: 21 February 2019 / Accepted: 22 February 2019 / Published: 28 February 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances of Adolescents and Children Health Research)
The present study aimed to examine the factors associated with different forms of independent mobility (IM) to school (IM one way and IM both ways) according to their parents’ opinions. To do so, several variables were evaluated: how parents assess their children’s autonomy, the difficulty they perceive for IM to school, reasons for IM/no IM to school, parents’ willingness for IM to school, frequency of children’s IM for leisure activities, children having house keys and dangers perceived in the neighborhood. Family-related socio-demographic variables were also assessed: number of children, position occupied by them in the family, family composition, living with both parents or just one, and each parent’s nationality, level of education and job status. This study examined the data collected from 1450 parents (mothers and fathers) with children studying Primary Education years 4, 5 and 6 (M age = 10.53, SD = 0.90). The results showed that 42.3% of the schoolchildren did not practice IM to school, 18.1% practiced IM one way (they went to or from school alone), and 39.5% practiced IM both way (they went to/from school alone). These findings underline the importance of parents’ willingness for IM to school, and how the balance between how they perceive their children’s autonomy and difficulty for IM is relevant for greater IM to school.
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Keywords:
independent mobility; parents; willingness; perception of autonomy; difficulty
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Ayllón, E.; Moyano, N.; Lozano, A.; Cava, M.-J. Parents’ Willingness and Perception of Children’s Autonomy as Predictors of Greater Independent Mobility to School. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16, 732.
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