Generations Attitudes from the Point of View of a Modern Primary School Age Child

Abstract

The work is aimed at studying the current attitude towards the ageing person by the generation of “digital childhood” in comparison with the expectations of representatives of the late-age generation. We assumed that, against the background of modern transformations of intergenerational traditions, we can expect descendants to recognize the preservation of the standard of ancestral behavior. 284 residents of Petropavlovsk- Kamchatsky were surveyed: 40 respondents from 57 to 80 years old and 122 child-parent dyads (children from 8,2 to 9.6 years old, parents from 27 to 61 years old). At the first stage, data were obtained from parents using the author's questionnaire allowing them to present their opinion about the real state of the relationship between children and their grandparents and the importance of (non-)participation of grandparents in the upbringing of their grandchildren. At the second stage, the analysis of the interviews in the focus groups of schoolchildren and a gerontological sample concretized attitudes towards a person of senior age and allowed independent experts to identify relevant categories (based on content analysis). At the third stage, options for reflecting the (non-)consent of the older generation with children's judgments were investigated. The results were evaluated on the Likert scale. It is shown that, despite the significant choice of children's attitude as condescending compassion, in the range of consent of the expected attitude, children's variants of continuity of preserving the experience of obligatory and valuable behavior of the grandparents are presented. The data obtained emphasize the problem of recognizing the uniqueness of the experience of each generational group as a source of generational solidarity and the basis of cultural adaptation to age.