The purpose of this study was to provide basic and useful informations to mothers who try to improve the socioemotional behavior of infants and the parenting efficacy for them in consideration of their temperamental traits, through the examinations of...
The purpose of this study was to provide basic and useful informations to mothers who try to improve the socioemotional behavior of infants and the parenting efficacy for them in consideration of their temperamental traits, through the examinations of the general tendency about the socioemotional behavior of infants, their temperament and the parenting efficacy of mothers according to background variables of infants and their mothers and the examinations of the relationships among the socioemotional behavior of infants, their temperament and the parenting efficacy of mothers. Four research questions were posed in this study;
1. Does the background variables of infants and their mothers make any differences to the socioemotional behavior of infants?
2. Does the background variables of infants and their mothers make any differences to the temperament of infants?
3. Does the background variables of infants and their mothers make any differences to the parenting efficacy of their mothers?
4. What is the relationships among their socioemotional behavior of infants, their temperament and the parenting efficacy of mothers?
The subjects in this study were 148 infants and their mothers from 16 daycare centers for early children in Seoul and Seongnam, which included 13 national/ public daycare centers and three private ones. The infants were 16 to 40 months old and attended the daycare centers over two months or more. The instruments used to assess the socioemotional behavior and temperament of the infants were ITSEA and TTQ, and PPC was employed to evaluate the parenting efficacy of the mothers. The collected data were analyzed to address the research questions by utilizing descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, correlation analysis and Duncan's post-hoc analysis. The major findings of the study were as follows;
First, the socioemotional behavior of infants was significantly different in according to all the personal variables involving gender, age, relationship with siblings. Those who were baby girls, who were at the western age of 2 and who have siblings excelled their counterparts who were baby boys, who were at the western age of 1 and who had no siblings in socioemotional behavior. Among the background variables of the mothers, occupation made a significant difference to that. The infants whose mothers were working surpassed their counterparts whose mothers weren't in that regard.
Second, the gender and age which are subcategories of their temperament made a significant difference to their temperament. Accessibility of infant boys was higher than that of infants girls, response intensity of infants 1 year old was higher than that of infants 2 year old.
Third, the parenting efficacy wasn't different in according to background variables of infants and their mothers.
Fourth, there was a significant correlation among the temperament of the infants, their socioemotional behavior and the parenting efficacy of the mothers. As for connections between the socioemotional behavior and temperament of the infants, better adaptability, better mood and stronger response intensity, which were all subfactors of temperament, led to more positive socioemotional behavior. Regarding links between their temperament and the parenting efficacy of the mothers, better psychological regularity, closer accessibility, better adaptability and better mood that were the subfactors of temperament led to the better parenting efficacy of the mothers. As for connections between the socioemotional behavior of the infants and the parenting efficacy of the mothers, stronger obedience and stronger motivation that were the subfactors of socioemotional behavior led to the better parenting efficacy of the mothers.