Parental Role Satisfaction Among Korean Mothers (I)

Parental satisfaction is the foundation of a happy family. It is a key factor in overall life satisfaction and also a critical variable in the development of children, and thus an education program aimed at parental satisfaction improvement is needed. This study attempts to determine basic elements of parental satisfaction that could enable better parental education programs. To accomplish this, mother's parental satisfaction and factors related to it were examined. The subjects were 641 mothers of primary school and middle school students aged 10, 12, and 14 residing in Seoul, Pohang and Kwangyang. Structured self-administered questionnaires were used to ascertain mothers' parental role satisfaction, mothers' role values, children related variables, mother related variables, father related variables, and home environment variables. The findings indicate that the variables related to parental satisfaction are multi-dimensional, that mothers' parental satisfaction can be improved by other family member's effort, and that a family's external characteristics are less important than its internal characteristics. These results imply that it is essential to include the characteristics of the family system when designing parental education programs. Furthermore, the role of specific family members, namely the husband, should be expanded in more supportive ways in Korean families to improve mothers parental satisfaction.