Poster Session 6: Parenting

Presenters: SuJung Park, Ann Mastergeorge

Summary
While previous research on the association between mothering and child outcomes has been carried out mainly in Western countries, to date little relatively is known about Korean mothers' parenting. Family systems theory suggests that the family is an organized unit consisting of family subsystems such as the couple and parent-child subsystems, and each subsystem influences one another. Family stressors can have a negative impact on parents' mental health and increase couple conflict. Subsequently, mothers' negative experience in life may spill over to deteriorate the quality of mother-child relationship which in turn increases children's behavioral problems. Nonetheless, mother's warmth is positively related to children's adjustment and negatively related to children's externalizing problems, implying that mothers' affection can contribute to children's outcomes. This study aimed to investigate whether the effects of family stressors, mothers' psychological distress, and martial conflict on children's externalizing problems operated through mothers' warmth.

Objectives
-- Given the importance of mothers' role in children's outcomes, the current study makes a meaningful foundation to previous work on understanding the mechanism in Korean families. Analyzing a Korean sample may provide a valuable basis for understanding the significance of mothers' influence on children's development.The findings in this study will be an asset for study on mothers' critical role to child outcomes, which remain understudied in Korea society.Investigating multiple factors in relation to parenting practices of mothers allowed for a specific examination of family dynamic. The present study showed that family stressors, mothers' psychological distress, and couple conflict predicted decreases in mothers' warmth, which in turn was associated with externalizing problems among Korean children.
-- In spite of evidence showing that mothers' warmth is influential in children's development there has been little research exploring complex mechanisms considering multiple predictors as to mothers' warm parenting. Furthermore, there is very limited knowledge of whether maternal psychological distress or couple conflict contribute children's externalizing problems among Korean sample. The present study demonstrated significant findings about how warm mothering could predict children's outcomes by considering family dynamics such as mother-child and mother-father interactions. As the first study that examined the indirect pathways of family dynamics, mothers' psychological distress, and warm parenting behaviors on Korean children's externalizing behavior problems, the results supported that these processes primarily studied with Western families are generalizable to Korean population.
-- This study points to the significance of looking the mechanism through which mothers' parenting affects children's outcomes. Mothers' mental health, couple relationship quality, and mothering may serve as critical targets of intervention for mothers who are under family stressors when they are struggling with parenting or have children who are exhibiting high levels of behavioral problems. It is important to deeply understand mothers' psychological health and the marital relationships within the family context as this may inform clinicians regarding how to provide useful services to prevent children's behavior problem.

Subject Codes: parent-child relationships, family processes, developmental issues
Population Codes: early childhood, Asian/Pacific Islander, international (Non-U.S.)
Method and Approach Codes: research, general, mediation/indirect effects models, structural equation modeling (SEM)