The purpose of this study is to investigate the status and relationship of the social support, rearing stress and self-esteem of the mother rearing children with hearing impairment. For this, the author tried to prepare the strengthening measures to e...
The purpose of this study is to investigate the status and relationship of the social support, rearing stress and self-esteem of the mother rearing children with hearing impairment. For this, the author tried to prepare the strengthening measures to enhance their physical and psychological response and the proper management by the mothers who plays a major role in caring for handicapped children, and also tried to suggest basic materials to practice the social welfare for them.
For a research, the structured survey questionnaire was distributed to the mothers who were rearing children with hearing impairment under 18 years old. The subjects were recruited from various educational institutes, social welfare centers and other parents' associations around the nation except Jejudo island and some local regions. 149 questionnaires out of 320 were finally adopted for this research, which was conducted from April 6th to April 30th, 2007. For investigating the social support, the author made a partial revision of the device by Seong Young-Hye(1993), whose device was partly revised from the original one by Park Ji-won(1985). For investigating the self-esteem, the author used the translated version of Self-Esteem Scale by Rosenberg(1965), which was translated by Lee Hoon-jin and Won Ho-taek(1995).
General characteristics of the mother rearing children with hearing impairment were analyzed with the collected data. For analyzing the social support, rearing stress and self-esteem, descriptive statistics was used. Their correlation was identified with the correlation analysis. ANOVA and t-test were used to find out the difference of the rearing stress depending on the general characteristics. Multiple regress was utilized to analyze the meaningful relationship among the rearing stress, social support and self-esteem. The results of the research are summarized as follows:
First, the overall rearing stress of the mother caring for children with hearing impairment was an average of 2.6752, which was not very high, while the pain felt by the parents was relatively high. Difficult characteristics of the children were also low. The status of self-esteem was moderate with an average of 3.2443, while functional social support was relatively high with an average of 3.5129.
Second, for difference of rearing stress depending on the general characteristics, the elements of age(between under 30 and over 50 years old) and existence of any handicap (of a mother) affected the rearing stress significantly, which positively reduced the stress. However, other elements except mother's age and her handicap were not significant variables.
Third, for structural characteristics of the social support, most respondents selected their husband as the source of support. Although 128 subjects(85.9%) out of 149 people in the nationwide selected their husband for their social support, the subjects' satisfaction was relatively low.
Fourth, for correlation between self-esteem and social support, the stronger the functional social support was, the higher the self-esteem was. For correlation between self-esteem and rearing stress, the stronger the self-esteem was, the less stress they received in the part of parents, children, and the overall. In addition, the higher the satisfaction toward the support providers was, the less stress they received in the part of parents-children.
Finally, for analysis of significance related to the social support, self-esteem and mothers' overall rearing stress, the self-esteem and social support found to be significant variables. In other words, when the social support was stronger and the self-esteem was higher, the rearing stress of the mother tended to be reduced.
Based on the above results, the stronger the functional social supports toward the mothers rearing children with hearing impairment, the less their rearing stress and the higher their self-esteem were. Therefore, it is essential that programs including regional supports system, medical information, educational supports and counselling service should be revitalized on a more realistic point of view.