The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating effects of resilience and stress coping skills on the relationship between parenting stress and psychological well-being of mothers of mentally retarded children.
For this purposes, a sur...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating effects of resilience and stress coping skills on the relationship between parenting stress and psychological well-being of mothers of mentally retarded children.
For this purposes, a survey on parenting stress, psychological well-being, resilience and stress coping skills was conducted with 400 mothers of mentally retarded children in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. Of the 400, a total of 271 were used to analyze data.
The main results of the this study are as follows.
First, a correlation between all factors showed that there was a significant negative correlation between parenting stress and psychological well-being. There was a significant positive correlation between resilience, active coping skills and psychological well-being and the opposite for passive coping skills.
Second, a multiple regression with parenting stress, resilience, stress coping skills as predicting variables and psychological well-being as the dependent variable, showed that each predictor had a significant effect on the dependent variable. parenting stress had a significant negative effect on psychological well-being and resilience had a significant positive effect. Among stress coping skills, active coping skills had a positive, and passive coping skills had a negative effect.
Third, to test the moderating effects of resilience and stress coping skills a hierarchical regression was conducted, and the results showed that both resilience and stress coping skills did not have a significant moderating effect. However the sub factor of parenting stress, physical stress, and that of resilience, self-regulation and positivity, there was a positive effect between the two. The higher self-regulation and positivity, the better psychological well-being was. However, when physical stress level increased, there was a tendency for moderating effect to decrease. The moderating effect of passive stress coping skills on physical stress was also significant. When passive stress coping skills was low, psychological well-being was high and when physical stress was high, passive stress coping skills decreased. The sub factor of parenting stress, physical stress, in which a significant moderating effect was seen, showed the lowest average among all other factors. Also, a simple-slope graph analysis showed that when physical stress level was low, the moderating effect had a much bigger effect.
The significance of present study lies in investigating the effects of parenting stress on psychological well-being among mothers of mentally retarded children and testing the moderating effects of resilience and stress coping skills on the relationship between parenting stress and psychological well-being. Based on these results, the suggestions, limitations, and necessity of follow-up studies were presented.