Relationship between the Support for the Foreign Mother's Home Language and Child's School Adaption in Korean Multicultural Families: A Dual Mediation Model

The influence of home language use differing from the dominant language used in schools on children's school adaptation remains inconclusive. Therefore, the current study aims to explore the structural relationships among the support for the foreign mother’s home language in Korean multicultural families, mother-child communication, mother’s parental efficacy, mother-child relationships, and child’s school adaptation, utilizing data from Korea’s 2021 National Survey of Multicultural Families. The results of the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) are as follows: The relationship between the mother’s home language supportive home environment and the school adaptation of adolescent children was mediated by the mother-child relationship and mother’s parental efficacy but was not mediated by the communication between a mother and a child. Furthermore, the dual mediating effects between the support for a mother’s home language and a child’s school adaptation in two pathways were all statistically significant. The more supportive the family is of the foreign mother’s use of her home language, the more it leads to mother’s improved parental efficacy or frequent mother-child communication, which in turn fosters a positive parent-child relationship, ultimately contributing to the child’s better school adaptation, including academic achievement. In a context where findings on the influence of non-dominant language use in immigrant families on children's school adaptation had yielded mixed results, this study holds significance by not only supporting the positive influence of foreign mothers’home language use but also by identifying the pathways through which the mother’s home language use contributes to the child’s school adaptation.