ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on disentangling the phenomenon of parenting in Poland within a framework of basic cultural orientation and with reference to historical, religious, and economic background. Parenting in Poland is affected by the economic situation directly via consequences as unemployment and poverty, but indirectly by overcrowded households and job migration of parents to other European Union (EU) countries. Poverty in modern Poland differs in many regards from its forms in earlier times, as well as from the types of poverty that are seen in other, both post-Communist and Western countries. The risk of poverty in children increases with lower parental education and in single-parent families, as well as families with three and more kids. In modern Poland many young people, with higher education and living in urban areas, assume Western values of independence and strive to live on their own. The younger and older generations have an important impact on the intergenerational transmission of values, parenting beliefs, and practices.
