ABSTRACT

Emotional availability refers to the capacity of parents to be emotionally present and responsive towards their children despite of their work commitments. Due to work pressure and lack of quality time, parents are unavailable to their children which is affecting child’s behavior and socio-emotional competency. Hence, the study was undertaken to study the emotional availability of working parents, socio-emotional competency and behavioral problems of high school children. The study was conducted in Bapatla taluk of Bapatla district and Dharwad taluk of Dharwad district with a sample of 330 high school children whose both parents were working. The data was collected through general information schedule, Socio-Economic Status scale developed by Kuppuswamy (2020), Lum Emotional Availability scale by Lum (2005), Socio-emotional competency by Zhou and Ee (2012) and behavioral problems using youth self-report by Achenbach and Rescorla (2001). The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics, chi-square, t-test, ANOVA, correlation and binomial regression. The findings of the study revealed that mothers were highly emotionally available compared to fathers and the difference was found to be significant. Parents were less emotionally available to 13-14 age group, girls and 9th standard children. Young age mothers, parents with high occupation and who belonged to upper SES were less emotionally available. Girls had high social awareness, relationship management and responsible decision-making, Further, in self-awareness and self-management, boys had high scores. With respect to behavioral problems, majority of the students were in normal category however, less than one-third were in clinical category. More than one-third had externalizing behavioral problems compared to internalizing problems. Parents emotional availability was positively correlated with self-awareness, social-awareness, self-management, relationship management and responsible decision-making. Further, parents emotional availability was negatively correlated with internalizing, externalizing problems and behavioral problems. Parents occupation and SES was negatively related with emotional availability. Age of the child was positively correlated with fathers emotional availability, self-awareness, social-awareness and self-management. Ordinal position was correlated with mothers emotional availability, self-management, responsible decision-making. Standard of the child was positively correlated with father and mother emotional availability, self-awareness, social-awareness and responsible decision-making and negatively correlated with externalizing problems and behavioral problems. Considering parents with high emotional availability as a reference group, children of parents with less emotional availability were at risk of being low in social-awareness, self-management, relationship management and responsible decision-making and borderline/clinical category of behavioral problems. To enhance the emotional availability of parents, intervention was given and a significant difference was observed before and after the intervention among father’s and mother’s of high school children. Hence, emotional availability of parents is crucial in parents-child relationship as it forms the foundation for healthy emotional development and attachment bonds. The best inheritance the parents can give to their children is a few minutes of time in a day.