The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the effects of interparental conflict perceived by children and mother's discipline style on school children's aggression. This study was ultimately intended to provide various suggestions which can be app...
The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the effects of interparental conflict perceived by children and mother's discipline style on school children's aggression. This study was ultimately intended to provide various suggestions which can be applied for parental education program and childㆍfamily counseling.
Subjects of this study consisted 625 elementary school students drawn from 4 elementary schools in Cheong-ju city. Data were analyzed with Cronbach α, t-test, F-test, Scheffe post-hoc test using SPSSWIN program. The theoretical model was tested by correlational matrix in LISREL Ⅷ package using a maximum likelihood estimation.
The results of this study were as follows:
First, there was statistically differences in parental conflict, mother's discipline style and children's aggression. Children's gender and father's job was one of variables to decide issues of parental conflict. And there was more correlation between son and frequence of parental conflict than daughter. Fathers who worked in production and technical part had more conflict with wife than those who worked in different field. The less-educated mothers had severe parental conflict than more educated mothers. Mothers were tended to use more often verbal aggression and physical punishment to son than daughter. The less-educated mothers used more physical punishment. Regarding children's aggression, son had more tendency to depend on overt aggression than daughter. But there was little difference in relational aggression according to gender. Sixth grade students showed more relational aggression than overt one. Students whose parents worked in production and technical part showed high degree of over aggression
Secondly, children's gender was one of key factors that differentiated their aggression which was affected by parental conflicts and mother's discipline style. Regardless of student's gender, the intensity of parental conflicts affected to mother's verbal aggression and physical punishment. Whereas son's overt and relational aggression was affected by mother's physical punishment, daughters' relational aggression was indirectly affected by mother's verbal aggression. The unresolved interparental conflict had a direct effect on overt aggression. For sons, mother's physical punishment was related with relational aggression and overt aggression. Mother's verbal aggression had direct effect on daughters' relational aggression and overt aggression. When it came to issues of parental conflict, sons had more relationship with that. But for daughters, mother's verbal aggression and physical punishment was affected directly by kind of issues and verbal aggression resulted from issue of conflict affect to daughter's relational aggression. For the unsolved issue of parental conflicts, it doesn't affects to sons, either. But for daughter, overt aggression appears through mother's physical punishment. Mothers' physical punishment is attributed to son's overt aggression and mother's verbal aggression is attributed to daughter's overt aggression and relational aggression
Thirdly, Children's age is other factor that is related with their aggression which is affected by parental conflicts and mother's education style. For fifth grade students, the intensity of interparental conflict had an influence on relational aggression and overt aggression. Through children's relational aggression and physical punishment has indirect impact from mother's verbal aggression. For the sixth grade, the intensity of parental conflict affect to mothers' verbal aggression and physical punishment directly, but It is only physical aggression that directly affect to student's relational aggression. The issue of conflicts doesn't affect to 5th grade student, but there are direct impact to mothers' verbal aggression & physical punishment and indirect impact to 6th grade students whose relational aggression increased by mothers' physical punishment. For only 5th grade, unsolved issues of parental conflict has negative direct impact to mother's verbal aggression and consequentially to children's overt aggression. mothers' verbal aggression affects indirectly to children's overt and relational aggression. Mother's verbal aggression affect directly to overt and relational aggression for 5th grade students and Mother physical punishment affect directly to relational aggression for 6th grade students
The results of this study implies that the effect of interparental conflict on children's aggression mediated by mother's discipline style can be different according to children's gender and age.