Why My Children Do Not Attend Nursery School: Attitudes of Parents Whose Decision Making Is Not Limited by Socioeconomic Disadvantage
Abstract
The study presented here aims to understand why some parents from ordinary middle-class families do not send their preschool children to kindergarten or send them only very irregularly. Data from in-depth interviews with mothers, which was obtained as part of the longitudinal monitoring of six families from the Liberec region during the pre-school year and commencement of compulsory education, was subjected to a content analysis.
The analysis identified four main themes: a strong protective family style of education; compensating for problems experienced during the parents' own childhood; mistrust that the kindergarten will ensure the child's comprehensive development, and early scholarization. The results are discussed with regard to the enactment of compulsory attendance of the pre-school year of kindergarten .