Parents/Children/Cultural Education. Horizon 2017

This study complements a survey of schoolchildren conducted in 2015 on behalf of the Council for Cultural Education, in which the central role of parents in the development and promotion of children´s cultural interests was highlighted. Following on from this, this study looks at the importance of cultural education from the parents´ point of view. Among other things, the importance of individual cultural areas for parents was determined in detail, as well as how much time they devote to individual areas themselves and also together with their children, and what importance they attach to the promotion of cultural activities for the development of their children. Other focal points of the survey were investigations into children´s participation in school and extracurricular cultural activities, the assessment of the quality of specific activities for children in their place of residence, and the financial possibilities of parents to support and promote their children in this area.

This study shows that many parents believe that cultural education is an important means for children to develop their own personalities. A large majority of mothers and fathers also see it as the basis for their children´s future careers. Cultural education is therefore a significant opportunity to successfully shape one´s own life. However, the prerequisites for this vary greatly from family to family: For children from economically and socio-culturally less well-off families, the preschool offerings in daycare centers and nurseries, as well as school instruction in artistic subjects and areas, are by far the greatest, and in quite a few cases even the only, opportunity to develop their own interest in culture or to expand it.

The sample consisted of n= 664 parents, of which 331 are mothers and 333 fathers. Parents with children in the three age groups 3 to 6, 7 to 12, and 13 to 17 were disproportionately included, deviating from their share in the population, in order to be able to analyze mothers and fathers with children in these age groups on a sufficient basis in the sample. In the reporting of summary results, this disproportionality was compensated for by factorial weighting to align with the structural data of official statistics.