• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.365-388
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• 2012

This study examined the effect of bilingual bicultural home environment and mother's command of Korean language on their participation in child rearing as well as on children's developmental outcomes. We carried out Analysis of Covariance Structure using the 1st year(2011) data of Gyeonggi Education Welfare Panel, which consists of 459 matched pairs of immigrant women and their 5th~6th grade children living in Gyeonggi-do. The results indicated that when the immigrant mother has good command of Korean language and the children are exposed to their maternal culture and language, mothers tend to actively participate in child rearing and this in turn has positive effects on developmental outcomes of their children. These results demonstrate that Korean language programs targeting immigrant women by marriage are important not only for assisting their employment and adaptation but also for enhancing parenting behaviors in multicultural families. Moreover these findings suggest that we need to understand the bilingual bicultural home environment in these families as a significant resource that contribute to their children's developmental outcomes and not as a risk factor to their adaptation, as it has frequently been viewed.