Mothers' Social Support, Psychological Consistency And The Relationship Between Their Parenting Style

Salutogenic model(SM) has drawn lots of attention in recent years. According to this model,everybody is considered to have general resilience resources(GRR), which help people recognize the world highly consistent.Sense of coherence(SOC) is a key concept that can be operational in salutogenic model. It is a mental tendency, which means whether individuals could react to the pressure proactively and effectively so as to consequently help themselves form an active and healthy life orientation. SOC is the key intermediary factor of individuals reacting to the pressure source as well as maintaining and promoting self-physical and psychological health. At present, the research done about SOC mainly include the following few aspects: individuals’ psychological health, emotions, diseases and happiness; pressure source, abilities to handle stress, and their reactions to pressure; the relationship between SOC and personalities such as self-esteem, self efficiency, and the mechanism of how SOC affects them.This research is done among 347 mothers of children aged from 3 to 6 as the research object,and SOC-13, maternal parenting style questionnaire together with SSRS were adopted as research tools to study their status of SOC, their maternal parenting style, their status of social support and the relationship between the three factors by using the questionnaire. The conclusion is drawn as below based on the research:(1) The difference of the status of SOC among those mothers with different ages and family incomes is significant, while it is not among those mothers whose educational backgrounds and careers are different. The research result is shown that those mothers aged above 30 are superior to those aged below 30 from the sense of coherence level perspective, and those mothers with higher family annual income are superior to those with lower family annual income.(2) The difference of maternal parenting style is not significant among those mothers whose children are different in ages and genders as well as their career status, but it is significant among those with different ages, level of educational backgrounds, family annual income, and birthplaces(urban or rural). This is mainly illustrated by the fact that those mothers whose ages are above 30 with higher levels of educational background(undergraduate and above), higher family annual income and also born in urban areas would be more likely to adopt democratic parenting.(3) The level of social support gained by the mothers is different depending on their own ages,educational backgrounds and family annual income. Evidence shows that mothers gained more support who are aged above 30, well-educated(undergraduate course and above) and with higherfamily income; It is also shown that mothers who are working for enterprises and the government gain more social support than those who are business women or housewives.(4) The conclusion is drawn from the research data: mothers with more qualifications(aged above 30, undergraduates and above, stable jobs with high source of income) would gain more social support, possess higher level of sense of coherence, and would be more likely to adopt democratic parenting.(5) There is significant correlation between sense of coherence of mothers and their parenting styles. Democratic parenting is significantly positively correlated to sense of coherence. Permissive parenting, authoritarian parenting, indulgent parenting, and inconformity parenting are significantly negatively correlated to sense of coherence. The sense of coherence of mothers is significantly positively correlated to their social support level.(6) The intermediary effect of sense of coherence is significant between social support and democratic parenting, permissive parenting, authoritarian parenting, indulgent parenting, and inconformity parenting, where sense of coherence plays an absolute intermediary effect on democratic parenting, permissive parenting, authoritarian parenting and inconformity parenting that took up 62.12%, 50.18%, 43.29%, and 70.09% respectively of the total effect, while it plays a partial intermediary effect between social support and indulgent parenting, which took up 24.33% of the total effect.