Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between young children's emotionality and social competence, father's parenting participation, and mother's parenting efficacy based on the verification of the mediating effects of father's parenting participation and mother's parenting efficacy in the relationship between young children's emotionality and social competence.
Methods: We utilized 2012 to 2014 data from the Korean Children's Panel Study provided by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education, and only the target data that met the study purpose were extracted and analyzed. The final data analysis subjects comprised 1,379 individuals, and the age of the children analyzed was 4 years in the fifth year and 6 years in the seventh year. Structural models were tested using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0
Results: First, the relationship between young children's emotionality and social competence was tested; it was found that the higher the emotional ability, the significantly lower the sense of social competence. Second, in the process of the influence of emotionality on social competence, mother's parenting efficacy exhibited a mediating effect, but father's parenting participation did not. Third, mother's parenting efficacy was shown to mediate and influence infants' emotionality and social competence.
Conclusions: In the relationship between young children's emotionality and social competence, father's parenting participation did not have a direct effect on the development of infant's sense of social competence but did mediate the efficacy of mother's parenting efficacy. Its importance lies in the fact that the father’s parenting participation in the parenting process of an emotional infant does not directly affect the father’s parenting participation but indirectly affects the increase in the infant’s social competence by enhancing the mother’s parenting efficacy.