This study is to find out a relationship between parents and children according to an adult attachment and an empathy ability of a mother, and to provide an efficient plan for improving parents-children relationship that is an essential factor for chi...
This study is to find out a relationship between parents and children according to an adult attachment and an empathy ability of a mother, and to provide an efficient plan for improving parents-children relationship that is an essential factor for children to have a healthier life within a family members.
The subject were 440 elementary school parents from the three elementary schools located in the metropolitan area.
An evaluation tool used for the study is called an "Experience in Close Relationship Scale (ECRS)" developed by Brennan et al. in 1998 and translated by Kyeong-ok Hwang in 2001 in order to estimate the adult affection of the mother. Also, in order to estimate the empathy ability, an empathy ability scale developed by Kyeong-il Shin in 1994 based on the emotional empathy scale by Mehrabian and Esptein and the personal distress scale (EC) by Davis was used. Also, in order to estimate the parents-children relationship, the writer of the study revised and translated a document called the "Network of Relationship Inventory (NRI)" by Furman (1985) translated by Jong-hye Han in 1996, through a content validity conducted by professional and two doctors.
The collected data was analyzed by SAS statistics program. The frequency and percentage were calculated to investigate the general characteristics of the subjects. To investigate reliability and validity of the measuring instrument, Cronbach's α was calculated. Data was collected using questionnaires and analyzed by t verification, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA.
The results of the study are as follows.
First, a social support and intimacy were different in the parents-children relationship according to the adult attachment type of the mother. A group with a stable attachment showed higher social support and intimacy compared to a group with a fear attachment.
Second, the social support and intimacy were different in the parents-children relationship according to a level of the empathy ability of the mother. A group with a higher empathy ability showed higher social support and intimacy compared to a group with a low empathy ability.
Third, as a result of an interaction between the parents and children on the adult attachment and empathy ability of the mother, although the adult attachment and empathy ability were effective on the social support, there was no interaction effect of two factors. Also, only the empathy ability was independently effective on the intimacy factor.
Based on the results mentioned above, the significance of this study is as follow: According to the study, there was a difference on the social support and intimacy in the parents-children relationship according to the adult attachment type and empathy ability that are individual characteristics of the mother. Accordingly, the study can contribute to provide efficient plan for improving the relationship between the parents and children.