Poster #135 - Effects of Parent-Child Relationship Quality and Marital Stability of Korean Immigrant Mothers on Children's Problem Behaviors

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Parental disciplinary warmth refers to disciplinary strategies that involve positive communications and child-oriented motivations, i.e., disciplinary practices intended to guide the child toward more prosocial behaviors (Larzelere et al., 1989) including such practices as praise, reasoning, and shared decision-making (Furman & Giberson, 1995). Although these practices have been linked to fewer externalizing behaviors (Gryczkowski et al., 2009) in children, less is known about the mediating pathways through which this association operates. Parent-child closeness may mediate the link between disciplinary warmth and problem behaviors in young children, since positive principled discipline is associated with intimacy between parent and child (Furman & Giberson, 1995). Furthermore, this association may be moderated by the stability of the marriage relationship, given that partnership instability is often related to child behavior problems (Osborne & McLanahan, 2007).

Further, these relations should be explored among Korean immigrant parents in the U.S., given that they traditionally tend to use harsher disciplinary measures (Kim & Hong, 2007). Although Korean mothers’ use of warmth has been positively linked to children’s social competence (Kim et al., 2007) and adolescent psychological adjustment (Kim, 2008), no research has examined disciplinary warmth and the potential mediating and moderating pathways that link this practice to child adjustment.

Participants included Korean immigrant mothers (N=150 Mage=36.10, SD=3.78) of preschoolers (Mage=4.26, SD=1.03, 41% male) in the U.S. Mothers reported on their (1) disciplinary warmth (α=.86) and (2) parent-child intimacy (α=.87) using the PCRQ (Furman & Giberson, 1995), (3) child’s problematic behaviors (α=.71) on the SDQ-P (Goodman, 1997), and (4) marital stability (i.e., regret surrounding the marriage and frequency of discussing divorce or separation; α=.77) on the RDAS (Busby et al., 1995).

Moderated mediation analyses were conducted using PROCESS, controlling for maternal age, child age, and gender. Disciplinary warmth was positively associated with parent-child closeness, b=0.68, p<.001, which in turn was associated with fewer problem behaviors, b=-2.84, p<.05. However, the indirect effect of disciplinary warmth on child difficulties was moderated by marital stability. Specifically, the indirect effect was negative and significant at higher levels of marital stability, ab=-2.75, SE=0.96, 95% CI [-4.63, -0.86], but not at low or moderate stability.

Parent-child closeness was found to have a mediating effect on the association between disciplinary warmth and children’s problem behaviors. Specifically, Korean immigrant mothers who displayed more disciplinary warmth reported greater closeness in their relationship with their children, which in turn led to fewer child difficulties. This indirect was significant only within the context of high marital stability. These findings suggest that for Korean immigrant mothers, the use of disciplinary warmth may engender parent-child closeness, which is a mechanism through which these child-oriented disciplinary practices reduce child difficulties. The results also demonstrate the importance of a stable marriage to the quality of the parent-child relationship, lending support to a spillover hypothesis of a positive and moderately-sized association between marital quality and parent-child relationship quality (Erel & Burman, 1995).

Authors

• Robin Han, Howard University
  Presenting Author

• Xiaofang Xue, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jillian J. Shen, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hyun Su Cho, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathy Vu, UMBC Department of Psychology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charissa S. L. Cheah, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  Non-Presenting Author