The Effect of Maternal Positive Parenting Attitudes on School Adjustment among Multi-cultural Adolescents in Korea: Mediating Effect of Ego-resiliency

Abstract

This study examined the effect of maternal positive parenting attitudes on school adjustment among multi-cultural adolescents in Korea and investigated if multi-cultural adolescents’ ego-resiliency mediates the relationship between maternal positive parenting attitudes and school adjustment. We used panel data from the fifth wave (2015) of the Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study (MAPS) collected by the National Youth Policy Institute. Participants were 1,297 multi-cultural adolescents (639 boys, 658 girls) who are second-year middle school students and have foreign mothers. SPSS 25.0 performed descriptive statistical analysis and correlation analysis. The structural equation model (SEM) was estimated with Mplus 5.12. The results of this study were as follows. First, a higher level of maternal positive parenting attitudes were related to higher level of ego-resiliency and school adjustment for multi-cultural adolescents. Second, maternal positive parenting attitudes had an indirect effect on school adjustment for multi-cultural adolescents via ego-resiliency. The results of this study indicate that maternal positive parenting behaviors would help improve the school adjustment of multi-cultural adolescents by increasing the level of ego-resiliency. In addition, the results of this study suggest that improving ego-resiliency for multi-cultural adolescents can be an effective method to help in school adjustment, as well as education for maternal parenting attitude.