Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Poster #94 - Parental Division of Child Care and Children’s Executive Function: The Meditating Roles of Marital Conflict and Parenting

Thu, March 21, 12:30 to 1:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Parenthood is a realm in which men and women continue to experience unequal responsibilities. As women’s educational and employment opportunities increase in Korea, their ideas about the gendered division of childrearing labor has been changing (Hwang, 2016). Yet gender inequality in terms of child care remains. Korean mothers spend about three times as much time caring for children as Korean fathers (Kim, Lee, & Lee, 2017; Park, 2016). The highly asymmetric division of child care potentially impacts children’s development by harming marital relationships and the quality of parenting. Most previous research, however, has not differentiated child care tasks from other household labor. Also, it has examined mainly its impacts on the marital relationship, ignoring its impacts on parenting quality and children’s subsequent developmental outcomes.
In a sample of Korean couples, the present study examined spousal division of child care and its relations with child executive function via marital conflict and parental warmth and control. We also examined gender-of-parent differences in relations among division of child care, marital conflict, and parenting behaviors. The participants were 1,705 couples and their children drawn from the Panel Study on Korean Children. At Wave 6, mothers and fathers each completed a questionnaire describing their own involvement in child care (Glych & Vandell, 1992). The 16 items included everyday child care activities such as bathing, feeding, and taking children to the doctor. Responses ranged from 1 (my partner does all the work) to 5 (I do all the work). A total score was calculated by averaging responses on all items. At Wave 7, both parents reported their perceptions of marital conflict using the Relationship Dynamics Scale (Markman, Stanley, & Blumberg (1994) and parenting behaviors using the revised Korean Parenting Style questionnaire (Cho, Lee, & Lee, 1999). The parenting measure consists of two factors, warmth and control. The control factor is similar to the concept of guan, Chinese parents’ training suggested by Chao (1994). Finally, at Wave 8, mothers reported on children’s executive function difficulties via responses on the Executive Function Difficulty Screening Questionnaire (Song, 2014).
Figures 1 and 2 present a series of path analyses. Mothers’ perceptions that they are responsible for a high proportion of child care positively related to both mothers’ and fathers’ perception of marital conflict, whereas fathers’ perceived proportion of child care was inversely related to both parents’ perceptions of marital conflict. In other words, the more mothers take care of children, the less happy the marriage, whereas the more fathers take care of children, the happier the marriage. Also, in line with previous studies, fathers’ proportion of child care was positively associated with paternal warmth (Feldman, 2000; Leekers et al. 2007; Riina et al., 2013). Mothers’ and fathers’ perceptions of marital conflict were also negatively related to both parents’ warmth toward their child, but not to control. Interestingly, both mothers’ and fathers’ perceptions of marital conflict were unrelated to control by either parent. Also, maternal and paternal warmth was negatively associated with children’s executive function difficulties, but not with control.

Authors