Relationship among child rights education, self-esteem, view of the child, and awareness of child rights

Objective: Education is generally considered as means of raising awareness for child rights. Yet, the specific mechanism between child rights education and raising awareness is relatively unknown. Thus, this study was to... [ view full abstract ]

Objective: Education is generally considered as means of raising awareness for child rights. Yet, the specific mechanism between child rights education and raising awareness is relatively unknown. Thus, this study was to explore the mechanism and the sequential role of self-esteem and view of the child (traditional view as an object of care and protection vs. modern view as a right-holder).

Method: A total of 2,587 individuals (adults) recruited from online self-report questionnaires sough to explore the followings: 1) whether they received child rights education 2) self-esteem 3) view of the child, and 4) awareness of child rights. SEM using Mplus was employed to test the model. FIML was used to handle missing responses.

Results: The model yielded an appropriate model fit to the data (χ2 (224) =2183.253, p <.001; CFI = .918; TLI =.907; RMSEA = .058). Individuals who received the education were likely to show higher self-esteem (β = .204, p<.001). Self-esteem indicated negative relation with the traditional view of the child (β=-.123, p<.001) and a positive relation with the modern view of the child (β=.313, p<.001). Traditional view was linked to a decrease in awareness of child rights (β=-.119, p<.001), and modern view was related to an increase in the awareness of child rights (β=.360, p<.001). Finally, awareness of child rights was not directly influenced by whether they received child rights education (β=.032, p=.094), but the relationship occurred through increased self-esteem and lowered traditional view (β=.003, 95% C. I.=.001 ~ .004), or increased self-esteem and increased modern view (β =.023, 95% C. I. =.014 ~.029).

Conclusion: This result provides practical evidence that raising self-esteem should occur concurrently with child rights education to maximize the impact of child rights awareness education.