Structural Relationships among Online Community Use, Parental Stress, Social Support, and Quality of Life between Korean and Taiwanese Employed Mothers

Abstract

This study examined mothers’ online community (OC) use and its structural relationship with parental stress, social support, and quality of life (QoL) under the social perspective of leisure and the theory of social support as a stress buffer. The population comprised employed mothers in two countries, Korea and Taiwan, which constitute appropriate settings for cross-cultural comparisons in the context of mothers’ OC use. The online questionnaire was distributed to 12 Korean mothers’ OCs and 14 Taiwanese mothers’ OCs, targeting employed mothers who have at least one child under seven-years-old and access mothers’ OCs on a regular basis. A total of 232 Korean and 303 Taiwanese responses were analyzed to examine the structural relationships among four key variables using structural equation modelling in AMOS 20. This study confirms that more parental stress leads to worse QoL. However, more parental stress results in less frequent participation in OCs, and OC use exerts a negative influence on QoL, which contradicts the hypothesized positive correlations. In comparison among Korean and Taiwanese mothers, Korean respondents showed a stronger influence of parental stress to mobilize more social support than did Taiwanese. This multidisciplinary study contributes to expanding the literature in noncommercial OCs, employed mothers in online leisure, and online social support in cross-cultural settings to promote the sustainability of families’ wellbeing.