Linking Maternal Gatekeeping To Child Emotion Competence:the Mediating Role Of Father Involvement

In recent years,the development of children’s emotional competence has received extensive attention all over the world.Emotional competence is an important branch of children’s social development.It is not only related to the establishment of early peer relationships,but also has an impact on future social adaptation and interpersonal communication.It is a key stage for children to develop the emotional competence.Previous studies have mainly explored the influencing factors of children’s emotional competence and the cultivation of emotional competence from the perspective of kindergarten.There are relatively few studies at the angel of family.Parents are important subjects in the growth of children,and the parenting relationship and interaction between the father and mother have an important influence on the development of children’s emotional competence.Therefore,based on the family background,this study explores the characteristics of maternal gatekeeping behavior,father’s parenting involvement,children’s emotional competence and the relationship among the three in order to enhance the parenting behavior of parents.In this study,559 children’s mothers in X city were selected as the research objects by questionnaire and 5 families were interviewd for date collection.The conclusions are as follows:1.Compared with discouragement behaviors and control behaviors,mothers showed more encouragement behaviors.There were significant differences in the variables of children’s gender,mother’s age and mother’s monthly income in discouragement behaviors.There were no significant difference in children’s age and number,mother’s occupation,parents’ educational background and family structure in discouragement behaviors.There were significant differences in the variables of children’s gender,parents’ educational background,family monthly income and family structure in encouragement behaviors.There were no significant difference in children’s age and number,mother’s age,occupation and monthly income in encouragement behaviors.There were significant differences in the variables of mother’s age and monthly income in control behaviors.There were no significant difference in children’s age,gender and number,parents’ educational background,father’s monthly income and family structure in control behaviors.2.In general,fathers’ involvement is above the average level.There was significant difference in the variable of children’s gender,but there were no significant differences in the age and number variables of children.There were significant differences in the variable of father’s educational background,occupation and monthly income,but there was no significant difference in the variable of father’s age.There were significant differences in the variables of mother’s educational background and family structure.3.In general,the development of children’s emotional competence is above the average level.There were significant differences in the variables of parents’ education background,occupation and mother’s monthly income,but there were no significant differences in children’s gender,age and the number variables.4.There are different correlation among maternal gatekeeping behavior,father’s involvement and children’s emotional competence.Among them,there were significant positive relationship between the three dimensions of maternal gatekeeping behavior and the overall of father’s involvement and all dimensions.There were significant positive correlation between mother’s encouragement behavior and children’s emotional understanding,emotional regulation and overall level of emotional competence.In addition to emotional awareness,the overall level and dimensions of father’s involvement had a significant positive correlation with the overall level and dimensions of children’s emotional competence.5.On the whole,mother’s encouragement behavior can positively predict children’s emotional competence;mothers’ encouragement behavior and discouragement behavior can significantly predict father’s involvement;the daily care dimension of father’s involvement can positively predict children’s emotional competence.6.The daily care dimension of father’s involvement mediated mothers’encouragement behavior and the children’s emotional competence.Based on the above conclusions,this study puts forward some specific suggestions from the perspective of families and kindergarten.