The Effect of Maternal Attitude Toward Child's Emotional Expressiveness on Child's Ego Resilience: Focusing on the Mediation of Child's Self-esteem and Aggression

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the maternal attitude toward child's emotional expressiveness on child's ego resilience and to verify the mediating effect of child's self-esteem and aggression between these variables. For this purpose, data were collected from 241 children aged 4 and 5 and their mothers enrolled in 10 daycare centers located in Gyeonggi-do. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 21.0 programs. As a result of the study, first, the mother's attitude of accepting supportive emotional expression had a significant positive effect on the child's self-esteem. Second, the mother's attitude of accepting non-supportive emotional expression had a significant positive effect on the aggression of child's, and a significant negative effect on the child's self-esteem. Third, child's aggression had a significant negative effect on child's ego resilience, and child's self-esteem had a significant positive effect on child's ego resilience. Fourth, the mother's attitude of accepting supportive emotional expression indirectly had a positive effect on ego resilience through the mediation of child's self-esteem. In addition, the mother's attitude of accepting non-supportive emotional expression had a negative effect on ego resilience indirectly through the mediation of child's self-esteem and aggression. This study is meaningful in that it was intended to come up with a concrete and multifaceted way to increase children's ego resilience by examining the influence of the mother's emotional expression acceptance attitude, which is a parent variable, and the child's individual variables, self-esteem and aggression, on children's ego resilience.