The purpose of this study was to examine how much group art therapy could contribute to improving the mother-child self-esteem of single-parents families and their perception of family relations.
The subjects in this study were 16 people who resided ...
The purpose of this study was to examine how much group art therapy could contribute to improving the mother-child self-esteem of single-parents families and their perception of family relations.
The subjects in this study were 16 people who resided at J single- parent family center. They included 8 mothers and their children, and an experimental group and a control group were randomly organized with four mother-child pairs each. An intrasubject-intersubject variable research design was employed, and among independent variables, group (experimental and control groups) was selected as the intersubject variable, and the testing time(pretest and posttest) was chosen as the intrasubject variable. The experiment was conducted in a counseling room of J single-parent family center from August 26 through November 4, 2003. The group art therapy was provided in 20 sessions, twice a week. The mother group and child group participated separately in the group art therapy program in the first to eighth sessions for 90 and 50 minutes respectively. In the ninth to 20th session, both groups took part in that together, 90 minutes each. To identify the effect of the therapy, the participants were tested with self-esteem scale, parent-child relationship satisfaction scale and mother representation- perception scale four days before and after the experiment respectively, and kinetic family drawing was attempted at the same time.
The results obtained are as follows:
First, there was a significant change in the self-esteem scores of the mothers and their children, which indicated the group art therapy had a positive effect on their self-esteem.
Second, there was a significant change in the mothers' satisfaction at their relationship with their children, and their children's mother representation-perception grades also underwent a significant change. Thus, the group art therapy had a favorable impact on their perception of mother-child relationship. According to KFD data, the mothers kept a distance from their children and tended to be partial to their younger sisters or brothers in the pretest. In the posttest, however, they got closer to their children, became more affectionate for them, and shared more positive interaction with them. In the pretest pictures drawn by the children, their mothers were often omitted or far from them, and they were described as gloomy, confused or upset, and no positive interaction existed. But in their posttest pictures, they drew their mothers who did something with them, and their distance got closer. Furthermore, there was a better expression on their faces, which implied that the group art therapy was effective.