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Poster #130 - Marital Satisfaction among Taiwanese Mothers: Links to Parenting Styles and Parenting Stress

Fri, March 22, 7:45 to 9:15am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

According to the family systems theory, tensions that emanate from marriage can spillover and adversely affect child rearing (Cox & Paley, 1997; Margolin, Christensen, & John, 1996). Research in both Western and Chinese families has evidenced that marriage-related dysfunction is associated with harsh/coercive parenting styles, which in turn positively predicts children’s behavior problems (Chang, Lansford, Schwartz & Farver, 2004; Margolin & John, 1997). Despite this evidence, the aspects of marital satisfaction that impact parental stress and parenting styles remain understudied among Taiwanese mothers.
Taiwanese mothers may be especially vulnerable to marital dissatisfaction due to the dramatic societal shifts towards extensive urbanization and family nuclearization, which hinder the ability for mothers to rely on traditional extended family networks for support (Lu, 2006). Thus, stress associated with parenting may be rising in correspondence with the sociocultural shifts. Indeed, compared to European American mothers, Taiwanese mothers reported more childrearing-related conflicts as well as higher use of authoritarian/coercive parenting (Yu, 2008). In order to develop effective family interventions, there is a pressing need to understand: (a) the sociodemographic factors that are associated with marital satisfaction, and (b) the marital factors that precipitate parenting stress and parenting (Lu, 2006).
This study utilized a multistage stratified cluster random sampling strategy to select participants, which resulted in a sample of 511 mothers with preschool children recruited from Taipei (an urban area) and Taitung (a rural area) in Taiwan. Mothers completed the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS, Cohen & Williamson, 1988) and reported on their marital satisfaction using the Multifaceted Marital Satisfaction Scale (MMSS; Shen, 2002). Lastly, mothers reported on their authoritative and coercive parenting styles using the Maternal Parenting Style Questionnaire (MPSQ; Li, 2002). Table 1 presents all descriptive statistics of the study variables.
Zero-order correlations between all study variables are presented in Table 2. Additional t-tests showed that compared to mothers from rural families, urban mothers were more likely to display warmth (t(509) = 2.68, p = .007) and were less satisfied with traditional gender roles (t(509) = -3.27, p = .001). In terms of parenting, working mothers were more likely to display authoritative demandingness, warmth, and reasoning than unemployed mothers (ts(502) = -2.35 to -3.04, ps < .05). Compared to mothers from extended families, mothers from nuclear families were more likely to display demandingness and warmth and be more satisfied with multiple dimensions of marriage, including their partner’s personality, values shared, financial management, relations with relatives and friends, and childrearing (ts(491) = 2.14 to 3.36, ps < .05). Path analyses will be conducted in Mplus to examine the associations among marital satisfaction, parental stress, and parenting styles. We hypothesize that controlling for demographic variables, marital satisfaction will positively predict authoritative parenting and negatively predict authoritarian parenting. Parental stress will partially mediate the relationship between marital satisfaction and parenting styles.

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