Abstract
The purpose of the study was to investigate the mother-child interactions in terms of maternal child- rearing behavior, maternal self-esteem, and their school-age children's self-esteem. The subjects were, all living in the Seoul area. A pre-test was conducted twice on 98 subjects. Each time the values of Chronbach's ${\alpha}$ were obtained on maternal behavior, maternal self-esteem and children's self-esteem. Data analysis was by ANOVA, Pearson's product-moment correlation. multiple regression analysis. Chronbach's ${\alpha}$, and factor analysis. Children's self-esteem was positively related (1) to family background factors:educational level, employment status of mothers, social economic status, and number of siblings (2) to maternal self-esteem and (3) to maternal child-rearing behavior in the dimensions of affection, acceptance, and encouragement of independency. Children's self-esteem was negatively related to maternal child-rearing behavior in the dimensions of hostility, rejection and encouragement of dependency. The relative importance of independent variables on children's self-esteem was found to be in the following order:mother's educational level. social economic status, and number of siblings (${\beta}=0.5935$, p< .001), maternal child-rearing behavior in the affection-hostility dimension (${\beta}=0.0849$, p< .001), and in the acceptance-rejection dimension(${\beta}=0.0365$, p< .05). The regression model showed that 25 percent of the children's self-esteem could be accounted for by family background factors. and maternal child-rearing behavior in the affection-hostility dimension and the acceptance-rejection dimension ($R^2=0.25$).
