• Korean Journal of Child Education & Care
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.83-110
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating effects of mothers' beliefs about emotional guidance on the relations between children's emotionality and parenting stress. The participants were 213 mothers of 3~5 year old children from early childhood educational institutions located in Gyeonggi province and Daejeon, Korea. Mothers completed questionnaires regarding children's emotionality, beliefs about emotional guidance and parenting stress. The main results of this study are as follows. First, children's gender, age and mothers' age was related to parenting stress. And maternal parenting stress was positively related to children's negative emotionality and mothers' beliefs that children learn emotion by themselves and negatively related to beliefs that parent should coach children's emotion. Also, the relations between negative emotionality of children and parenting stress were significantly moderated by mothers' beliefs about emotional guidance. That is, higher levels of children's negative emotionality predicted higher parenting stress especially for mothers who believe that children learn emotion by themselves. The findings of this study suggested the importance of mothers' emotion related beliefs to reduce parenting stress.