The study was performed to examine effect of Gottman’s parent emotion coaching program on mothers’ child-rearing attitude and parenting stress. The program was structured in a parent education form to teach how to understand and treat the feelings...
The study was performed to examine effect of Gottman’s parent emotion coaching program on mothers’ child-rearing attitude and parenting stress. The program was structured in a parent education form to teach how to understand and treat the feelings of a child behind the child’s behaviors. This is to help mothers, the main caregiver for children, understand and accept children’s feelings. And the purpose of this study is to investigate effect of the program on child-rearing attitude and parenting stress by comparing mothers’ pre-program status and post-program status.
For the purpose of this study, before implementing the parent emotion coaching program, a preliminary examination was conducted on the sample of parents having children going to elementary schools located in Gunsan-si. The sample was divided into an experimental group and control group with 20 parents, respectively for the pre-test examination. Then the 6-week parent emotion coaching program was implemented and a post-test examination was performed again in the same method as the pre-test examination to see if there was any change in their child-rearing attitude and parenting stress.
To assess mothers’ child-rearing attitude in this study, Wonyeong Lee(1983)’s modified and improved version of Schaefer(1959)’s maternal Behavior Research Instrument (MBRI) was utilized. Regarding the parenting stress, Gyeongsuk Lee et al.(2008)’s tool developed and standardized in line with the South Korean situation was used without a change. This Korean version of parents’ child-rearing stress test-reduced type scale was used herein in 3 sub-dimensions – parents’ pain, parent-child dysfunctional interaction and demanding child. The parent emotion coaching program was consisted of 6 modules of the understanding of parent education program, understanding of child developmental characteristics, reason to choose emotion coaching, understanding my meta-emotion, what type of caregiver I am?, 5 phases of emotion coaching for communication and communion with child and effective conversation method of emotion coaching. The program was provided by a coaching expert for 120 minutes a day for 6 weeks.
The experiment research was treated with SPSS 18.0, a social scientific statistical program, for statistical data establishment herein. To verify the effectiveness of the study task, Repeated Measure ANOVA was operated herein during the pre/post/follow-up-tests to look at the sub-dimension-specific experimental effect and changes in the experiment and control groups' child-rearing attitude and parenting stress.
The study results are summarized as follows;
First, the group receiving the parent emotion coaching program was found to have differences in the overall child-rearing attitude scores, from their pre-program status. The control group showed almost no change in the scores. Therefore, it was demonstrated herein that the parent emotion coaching program had a positive effect on mothers’ child-rearing attitude.
Second, the average scores of sub-factors – affectionate attitude, rejective attitude and dominant attitude – were compared. In the comparative graph of the control and experimental groups, after the program, autonomous and dominant attitudes, child-rearing attitude sub-factors, increased and rejective and dominant attitudes decreased in the graphs. Therefore, it was shown herein that the parent emotion coaching program had an effect on child-rearing attitude sub-factors.
Third, the group receiving the program education showed lower scores in general aspects of parenting stress than the pre-program status, indicating a significant effect. The control group showed no significant effect in the scores. The parent emotion coaching program had significant effects on the overall changes in parenting stress.
Forth, the average scores of sub-factors – personal pain, parent-child dysfunctional interaction and demanding disposition – were compared. In the graph of the control and experimental groups, after participating in the program, the participants’ parenting stress sub-factors of personal pain, parent-child dysfunctional interaction and demanding position were found reduced. Therefore, it was shown herein that the parent emotion coaching program had an effect on parenting stress sub-factors.
To sum the study findings, it was found in this study that the parent emotion coaching program helped decrease parenting stress and of the parenting stress sub-factors, personal pain, parent-child dysfunctional interaction and demanding disposition fell significantly. These findings indicate that the program helps change mothers’ emotional responsive attitude to children’s feelings to be more supportive. And from such a change in themselves, mothers can change their awareness on emotion and improve their relationship with children. The present study has shown its effectiveness in finding this aspect. In other words, the mothers receiving the program improved the quality of their child-rearing attitude and parenting stress than before they participated in the program. It was found in this study, thus, that the participation in the emotion coaching program helped change the quality of the participating mothers’ child-rearing attitude and parenting stress to a more positive direction.
Keywords: parent emotion coaching program, parenting stress, child-rearing attitude