Abstract
The purpose of this study was to compare Korean mothers' and fathers' reactions to their children's negative emotions. The survey with questionnaire was performed with 179 mothers and 179 fathers of children aged three to five-years-old from three child care centers in Seoul and Kyoungki Province. Parental emotion-related practices regarding children's negative emotions were assessed with an adaptation of the CCNES-R(Cortes, 2002), and parental reactions were categorized as problem-focused, emotion-focused, expressive encouragement, emotion-teaching, punitive, parental distress and minimizing. The main results were as follows. First, Korean mothers and fathers, in general, used more positive reactions than negative reactions when their children showed negative emotions, in particular problem-focused reactions were mostly used. In addition, Korean mothers were significantly higher than fathers on problem-focused and emotion-teaching reactions. Second, Korean mothers' and fathers' reactions to their children's negative emotions were significantly different depending on the educational level of mothers, mothers' job and fathers' job. But there was no significant differences in parent's reactions according to children's sex and age. The findings in this study provide implication for an association between parent's reactions to children's negative emotions and parent's socioeconomic background.
