The Relationships Between 'Emotional Competence of Young Children and Mothers' Emotional Expression across to Gender'

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine gender differences of young child's emotional competence and the relationship between emotional competence and the variation of mother's emotional expression across child's gender. The subjects of this study are selected from twelve Kindergartens and Child Care Centers located in Taegu and Gu-Mi. They are 326 children who are aged 5 to 6 and their mother. The children's Kindergarten teachers rated children's emotional competence as using measure of Woo's(2002) Emotional Competence Index for Children. The measurement of emotional expression of their mothers are measured by using the SEFQ developed by Halderstadt and his colleagues(1995) and adjusted by Seo(2006). Statistical analyses by using SPSS Win 14.0K are descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviation, t-test, and Pearson's correlation. Especially, Pearson's correlation is used to examine the relations between child's emotional competence and mother's emotional expression. The findings of this study are as follows: First, statistically significant gender differences in young child's emotional competence were found between boys and girls. Girls' emotional competence in, emotional expression, emotional recognition of others, emotional regulation, empathy, and emotional language was significantly higher than those of boys. Second, there were not found to be significant differences in mother's emotional expression according to child's gender. Third, testing the relationships between young children's emotional competence and mother's emotional expression showed that girls' emotional competence was somewhat related to mother's positive and negative emotional expression, while boys' emotional competence does not have an association with mothers' emotional expression. Therefore, these results showed that not only young children's gender but also mother's emotional expression was an important variable in young children's strategies of emotion competence.