Attitudes of the citizens of Serbia towards the goals of family upbringing

Abstract

The subject of discussion are the attitudes of citizens towards the qualities that children should be encouraged to learn in the family, based on the data collected in the fourth wave of the World Values Survey (1999-2004). The aims of this paper are: to determine the hierarchy structure of citizens’ values regarding the qualities that children should be encouraged to learn as part of their family upbringing; to determine whether the priority is given to the development of autonomous or conformist personality, as well as the correlates of each of these two orientations; to determine what the position of Serbian public opinion is in comparison to the European countries encompassed by the World Values Survey. The analysis comprises representative samples from 33 European countries, in total 48,220 respondents. The research in Serbia comprised 1200 citizens aged 18 and above. It was shown that Serbian public opinion gives priority to the development of the qualities of an autonomous personality over conformist. Regarding the values and goals of upbringing, Serbia is at the level of average of the European countries as a whole. The younger and more educated respondents give priority to the development of autonomous qualities, as well as those who acquired post-materialist values. Progressive goals of upbringing which are supported by the public can be accomplished with significant changes in the direction of increase of social standard, quality of education and competence of all those people who participate in the upbringing of the young