유치원 아동어머니의 양육태도와 양육효능감이 자녀의 사회적 유능감에 미치는 영향

Abstract

Objectives Our objectives were to assess the effects of mothers’ parenting attitudes and parenting efficacies on children’s social competence by the level of their attitude toward children’s emotional expression, and find a way to enhance social competence. Methods Our research targeted 270 mothers of kindergarteners in D city and K province, and the collected data were analyzed using SPSS 27.0 to examine the correlation among each variable. Also, one-way ANOVA was used to identify the difference among the variables, and multiple regression analysis was used to examine variables’ interrelations. Results First, the mothers’ parenting attitude, parenting efficacy, and the children’s social competence had an average score of 3 or higher on a 5-point Likert scale. It was found that parenting efficacy showed a significant difference: parenting efficacy was higher when the attitude toward emotional expression was ‘high, medium’ than in the case of ‘low’. As a result of correlation analysis, mothers’ rejection as a parenting attitude showed a negative correlation with attitude toward emotional expressions and parenting efficacy at every level. Third, with the length of the marriage, which showed the most significant difference as a result of examining the effect of sociodemographic characteristics on children’s social competence, used as a control variable, we analyzed three levels of the effect of the mothers’ attitude toward emotional expressions-high, medium, low-on their parenting attitude and parenting efficacy. The result was that the length of marriage and parenting efficacy in the high group, the length of the marriage, parenting attitude, and parenting efficacy in the medium group showed significant influence on children’s social competence. The low group was not statistically significant with every variable, and the explanation power for each of the levels was 35%, 32%, and 11%. Therefore, it can be seen that the higher the mothers’ attitude toward children’s emotional expression, the greater the effect of their parenting efficacy on the children’s social competence. Conclusions The mothers’ attitude toward children’s emotional expressions is a factor that influences the mothers’ positive parenting attitude and parenting efficacy, and affects the children’s social competence along with the two factors. In conclusion, to enhance children’s social competence, it is required to improve mothers’ attitudes toward children’s emotional expressions, and the necessity of developing educations and therapy programs that foster mothers’ positive parenting attitudes and parenting efficacy is suggested.