Parenting and young children’s emotional self

The present study was designed to examine the relationship of Korean mothers’ psychological resources and discipline style to their children’s emotional self-regulation development. Structural equation modeling was conducted with a sample of 234 Korean mothers of kindergarten-aged children in the Incheon area in South Korea. The results indicated that maternal harshness negatively predicted and inconsistency positively predicted children’s emotional self-regulation development. Second, mothers’ psychological resources (i.e. parenting self-efficacy, enjoyment of parenting) predicted less harshness, inconsistency, and permissiveness and more responsiveness. Third, the direct path from enjoyment of parenting to permissiveness in parenting behaviors was moderated by the child’s gender. The results indicated that certain parenting behaviors, particularly permissiveness and inconsistency, may have culturally distinctive effects on children’s development in Korea