This study was performed to clarify the structure of children's response tendencies which appeared in conflict situations with their parents, and to examine the effect of age, social strata, sex and conflict partner (mother or father) on them. ‘Some parts of parents’ interview protocols and subject's responses in a sentence completion test were used as the raw data for analysis.
An analysis framework of conflict solution responses in self-other relation was originated and used in this study as the analysis framework. It consists of 5 orientations of condemnation, 6 orientations of solution and 4 types of response.
Factor analysis was performed for the combined data from subject's replies and his mother's. Five basic response patterns obtained from the factor analysis were as follows: (1) “Evasion from the Conflict”, (2) “Behavioral Solution-oriented Response”, (3) “Autistic Solution-oriented Response”, (4) “Escape Impulsive Response”, (5) “Aggressive Impulsive Response”.
Variance analysis was performed for the combined data from subject's replies and his mother's in order to examine the effect of age, social strata and sex. The results indicate that only the effect of sex is remarkable. That is, girls show more tendencies of self-condemnation, uncertain orientation of condemnation, self-concessive solution, and emotional-behavioral desertion.
In order to examine the effect of the conflict partner in addition to age, social strata and sex, variance analysis was performed for the combined data from parent's replies. The results show that children blame and attack their mothers more than to their fathers with language or behavior: that the educated class parents consider their children to be more self-condemative than the working class parents: and that 10 year old children are considered by parents to be more other-condemnative than 14 year old children.