Influencing factors on mothers' parenting style of young children at risk for developmental delay in South Korea: The mediating effects of parenting stress

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Parenting style Children with or at risk of developmental delay Parenting stress Parenting style is regarded as one of the most significant factors for children's development, especially for children with or at risk of developmental delay. Due to the importance of parenting style, this study explored factors that affect the parenting style in families with children at risk for or with developmental delay in South Korea. Guided by the Transactional Model of Development and the Belsky's Model of Parenting, this study specifically addressed the influence that parent, child, and social context characteristics have on parenting style. This study is a secondary data analysis of 470 mothers who participated in the second wave of the Panel Study on Korean Children conducted in 2009. The results showed that mother's employment, mother's age, parenting stress, and social support were significantly related to mother's parenting style. There were two major implications. First, early intervention programs need to provide services to both parents and children in order to improve children's outcomes. Second, mothers of children at risk of developmental delay need to be encouraged to participate as active agents in their children's development. The autism spectrum prevalence in South Korea was 2–3% in 2011, although under-or over-estimation is possible (Kim et al., 2011). This surprising percentage attracted attention from both professionals and parents. In June 2011, the " Welfare Support Act for Children with Disabilities " bill, which was designed to support the well-being of children with disabilities and to promote early diagnosis and early intervention programs, was passed in South Korea. To comply with this Act, the Korean government recently began to build a service delivery system for young children with disabilities. Parallel to this social environment, the capacity for detecting and diagnosing developmental delay increases when children are less than three years of age (Landa, Holman, & Garrett-Mayer, 2007; Lord & Luyster, 2006). A number of studies have suggested that children who are diagnosed with or at risk of developmental delays need to receive attention and intervention as early as possible to fully develop their po-Timely engagement with early intervention programs and responsiveness to children's risk or impairment will reduce the magnitude between a typical developmental trajectory and a developmentally delayed trajectory (Ramey & Ramey, 1998). During the past 30 years, a large number of empirical and theoretical studies have supported …