Keywords

1 Introduction

According to Your life better index survey (2013) in Taiwan, about 14.76 % of employed people thought they have too much “work” time and too few “family interaction” time. Parent’s guidance has long term influence on the growth of children. Leibowitze (1974) have proven that parent’s parenting time has very significant correlation to the future development of the children. The main objective of this research is: To investigate the correlation between parenting time and the growth and performance of children aged 0–12.

2 Literature Review

2.1 The Life Form of Parenting Family

Parenting time spent by parents has great influence on the development of children (Apps and Rees 2002). In many researches, it was pointed out that parents of higher educational background, as compared to parents of lower educational background, will spend more time actively on taking care of their children (Guryan et al. 2008). Moreover, parents receiving higher education not only will invest more time in taking care of children, but also will change the distribution status of parenting time based on different development stage of children (Kalil et al. 2012).

2.2 The Relationship Between Parents-Child Interaction and Time

Landreth (2002) has proposed that through a daily companionship of 20–30 min with children for game playing, parents can build very close relationship with child, and such relationship will turn out to be very helpful to the feeling of safety, confidence and creativity of the child. According to a questionnaire survey, parents-child co-reading time is, on the average, about 11–20 min each day, then child’s reading habit developed will be helpful to the enhancement of child’s reading capability (Wu and Chang 2014).

2.3 Relationship Between Companionship and Child’s Growth Performance

This research will study if companionship activities can generate change on important features of children, and the literature surveys are as follows:

  • Sense of hearing: The interactive process is helpful to the child’s listening vocabulary comprehension, more importantly, in the story and game situation, child’s interactive skill and friendship with people can be built (Huang 2012).

  • Sense of sight: When the baby is accompanied for reading, the level of concentration of the baby will be higher, and baby’s eye will then concentrate on meaningful message and message regarding the leading role in the story (Jin 2010).

  • Language development: Companionship activity can provide the baby with more complicated chances of speaking, which in turn will affect both baby’s language development and reading capability (Zeng and Cheng 2011).

  • Personal identity: When the baby has more frequent interaction with parents, safety attachment relationship could be easily formed between parents and the baby, and baby will not feel sorrowful easily, which in turn will promote the generation of safety attachment relationship between the baby and his peers (Li et al. 2007).

  • Learning/identify: A child with good attachment relationship and parents-child interactive relationship tends to have less anxiety towards a stranger, such child tends to have better adaptive capability to the society, and better problem solving capability (Liu 2002).

3 Research Method

The research method adopted in this paper is questionnaire survey and statistical analysis. Investigating the relationship between the content of companionship and the child’s growth performance, therefore, parents with children aged under 12 years old are selected for the filling of survey questionnaire. Quantity of issuance: 30 copies and duration: October, 2014.

3.1 Experimental Variables

  1. 1.

    Independent variable: According to American Time Use Survey, time is divided into half hour. In this research, parents’ off-duty companionship time for children is studied, therefore, the research is focused on the time period from 17:00–17:30 to 24:00, and each half hour is taken as one unit.

  2. 2.

    Dependent variable: Child’ performance, and according to the above mentioned literature, dependent variables are listed and are numbered and labeled in the order of 1–12: Vocabulary comprehension capability, friendship relationship, interpersonal interactive skill, stare at meaningful message, language capability, not being sad, low feeling of dependency, peer relationship, emotion regulation capability, problem solving capability and social capability.

3.2 Research Tool

Subjective feeling scale. Likert’s five-point scale is used as measurement standard, “Very agree, agree, not sure, disagree, very disagree” are used as selection items. Based on his past companionship experience with child and observation of child’s growth performance.

3.3 Statistical Analysis

  1. 1.

    Descriptive statistics: Basic statistics of the data.

  2. 2.

    Descriptive statistics and ANOVA: Whether parenting time would influence child’s performance.

4 Experimental Result

4.1 Descriptive Statistics

After sorting, the average educational background is from university or college, or from university of science and technology. Ages of persons under test fall in the range of 29–49 years old, with average age of 37.9 (years old); age of child is 5.04 (years old), and the youngest age is of 0.8 month, and the eldest age is of 12 years old.

4.2 ANOVA Results

According to the results from the test of homogeneity (P > 0.05) and ANOVA, the significant items (P < 0.05) are listed in Table 2.

5 Conclusions and Discussions

5.1 Late Marriage Phenomenon

Presently, when the ages of persons under test are investigated regardless of gender, as shown in Table 1, the average age falls on 37.9, which shows that late marriage phenomenon dominates in Taiwan, meanwhile, the average educational background is above university, therefore, it is concluded that time for receiving education affects the age of marriage.

Table 1. Basic data statistics
Full size table

5.2 Parenting Time Will Affect Child’s Performance

The result of Table 2 shows the companionship time with a child for reading, playing game and dining is on the average of about 30 min, which turns out to be helpful to a child’s development.

Table 2. Test result shows that parenting time will affect child’s performance
Full size table
  1. 1.

    In the time period of 17:30–18:30, it usually brings positive and happy mood to a child, therefore, in the sense of hearing aspect, the child tends to have better vocabulary comprehension capability.

  2. 2.

    In the time period of 20:30–21:30, the effectiveness of interaction with a child is most significant, at this moment, the child will notice meaningful message and the message from the leading role of a story, and the child tends to have better performance in logic of language; meanwhile, independent thinking capability of the child is trained too so that the child will not have too strong dependence on family members.

  3. 3.

    In later time period of 22:30–24:00, child and parents usually have difficulty to concentrate, therefore, it is recommended that the parents only chat with child or just stay quietly with the child, with this period of companionship with child, child can get along with others easily, therefore, and the child tends to have good relationship with his friends.