Laste ja lastevanemate käsitlused taskurahast
Date
2008
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
The bachelor’s thesis at hand aims to describe children’s and parents’ attitudes, beliefs and
practices in relation to allowance and to determine the main arguments from which parents
proceed when determining the amount of allowance and how children use their allowance.
Estonia has reached the so-called consumption highway where individuals can choose
between different products. The market does offer ample choice but, at the same time,
extensive consumption is not financially sensible for everyone. Children and adolescents are
active consumers due to the fact that they have an allowance and they skilfully influence their
parents’ consumer behaviour. This means that children’s ability to consume is dependent on
the income of the family which is something that is not directly analysed within the thesis.
Children nowadays become consumers earlier than they did in previous generations, using the
media constantly for their advantage. Childhood has been treated as an age of innocence in
our culture but social scientists have, in the last decades, started to reconsider this notion, as
due to changes in the society the meaning of childhood is changing as well. The main factors
of this change could be captured in terms such as “information society”, “mass culture” and
“consumer culture”. Based on this, the results of a survey conducted in a small town are
significant in our fairly young and changeable consumer culture.
The study was conducted among children in the second and third grade, as it is in this age that
material objects become more significant in relation to one’s identity and, also, a more
meaningful relationship with money develops. One parent of every child was also included in
the study. The 18 in-depth interviews provided sufficient material for an analysis that allowed
generalisations to be made regarding the behaviours of the children and their parents in the
community investigated. However, this is not a representative sample and, thus, the results
cannot be used to make generalisations about all the children of that age and their parents in
Estonia.
The method adopted was that of a semi-structured survey (in-depth interview) and an
interruptive approach was used. Qualitative textual analysis was used to analyse the
transcriptions of the in-depth interviews.
The results have been presented according to the questions in the survey. The children and
their parents have been discussed together in order to provide points of comparison. The
questions asked from the parents and the children had similar contents which makes it
interesting to observe the differences of the children’s and parent’ views.
In general, the children’s and parents’ practices and perceptions were surprisingly similar in
terms of consumption, but certain subtopics did reveal fairly interesting differences in
opinions – differently from the children the parents did not favour paying children for doing
household chores or rewarding good grades with money.
The location seems to have a direct influence on the level of activity in shopping. Parents
consider it bothersome to take children along to buying food on a daily basis and children are
not that interested in it. Frequently, parents buy food on their own right after work, having
beforehand asked the children’s preferences. On the average, children are taken along when
buying food once a week. Children are more interested in going shopping in cities. The small
town investigated presents an interesting example of how shopping is divided into two
different practices both for the parents and the children – the daily purchases in the local
shops as opposed to going to a city which is considered an event of its own.
Surprisingly, the survey revealed that although children do not get money on a regular basis,
nine out of nine children still get an allowance. It was overwhelmingly the case that children
asked their parents for money when they needed it or when they wanted to buy something;
they were not given a specific amount of money on a regular basis. Children themselves
would prefer a regular allowance. They would most like to receive a fixed sum of money per
month, but it would be important that they could always ask their parents for more if the
money runs out. Allowance is not important in Väike-Maarja.
The topic deserves further investigation. First of all, the focus should be on how city children
would answer the questions of the survey of the thesis at hand. In addition to revealing the
different consumption possibilities in terms of location, this would also enable the
investigation of how and which meanings children’s consumer habits assume in specific
surroundings.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd