Empathy of parent and loneliness in childhood

Ivana Gallová
Miroslava Balážová

Abstract

The intention of contribution is to refer the relation between the empathy of parents and social loneliness of their children. We researched intersex differences at the empathy and at the social loneliness at the same time. The experimental sample was made of 148 respondents (49 mothers, 47 fathers, 52 children). We used the BES (Jolliffe, Farrington, 2006) questionnaire for measuring of parents´ empathy and the LSDQ (Asher, Wheeler, 1985) for measuring children´s social loneliness. As the results shown, the empathy of parents is not an essential competency, which should have an important relation with children´s social loneliness. An exception is mother´s empathy, which has a significant negative relation with the social loneliness of the son. However we didn't identify any similar relations of father´s empathy. We found similar relations intersex differences in cognitive, affective and overall empathy of parents, while a higher score in particular components and overall empathy was achieved by mothers. We didn't identify any considerable intersex differences in the variable social loneliness of children.

(Fulltext in Slovak)

Keywords

empathy of mother, empathy of father, social loneliness of children

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