Degree Discipline

The relationship between maternal stress and mothers' perceptions of their preschool children's social behaviors: A cross-cultural study of immigrant Korean mothers in the United States and Korean mothers in Korea. (open access)

The relationship between maternal stress and mothers' perceptions of their preschool children's social behaviors: A cross-cultural study of immigrant Korean mothers in the United States and Korean mothers in Korea.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of maternal stress as it relates to the mothers' perceived social behaviors of their preschool children in both immigrant Korean families in the US and Korean families in Korea. The subjects included 49 immigrant Korean mothers in the US and 52 Korean mothers in Seoul, Korea. This study is relevant to current research because of the dramatically increasing Korean immigrants in the US and needed information concerning unique cultural and psychosocial needs of Korean-Americans. All mothers completed the Demographic Survey, Parenting Stress Index (PSI), and Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales-2 (PKBS-2). Statistical analyses of the data used for the study were multiple regressions, independent t-tests, and Pearson correlation coefficients. Data analysis revealed that (a) there were different demographic variables affecting maternal stress between immigrant Korean mothers in the US and Korean mothers in Korea; (b) there was no significant difference in maternal stress and mothers' perceptions of their preschool children's social skills in the areas of social cooperation, social interaction, and social independence between both groups; (c) there was a significant difference in preschool children's behavioral problems in the areas of externalizing and internalizing social-emotional behaviors between both groups; (d) …
Date: August 2007
Creator: Cho, Anna
System: The UNT Digital Library