A Study on the Longitudinal Relation Between Maternal Parenting Stress, Warmth Parenting, and Children’s Aggressive Behavior Using Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Modeling : a Multigroup Analysis Across Income Levels

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to analyze the longitudinal relationship between maternal parenting stress (MPS), warmth parenting (WP), and children’s aggressive behavior (CAB) in early childhood across income levels.Methods: An autoregressive cross-lagged model was used to assess the mothers and children of 723 families from the Panel Study on Korean Children across the sixth (age 5), seventh (age 6), and eighth (age 7) waves, and bootstrapping was conducted to examine the mediation effects. Further, a multigroup analysis was performed to assess the model’s hypothesized relationships for the low-income and middle-income groups. IBM AMOS 23.0 and SPSS Statistics 26 were used to analyze the data.Results: The results are summarized as follows: First, MPS, WP, and CABs remained unchanged over time. Second, MPS had a significantly negative impact on later WP, and WP negatively affected later MPS. Third, prior WP had a significantly negative impact on CAB. Furthermore, the relationship between MPS and CAB was mediated by WP. Lastly, during the study period, the multi-group analysis found no significant differences in the autoregressive cross-lagged model between the two income groups (the low-income and middle-income groups).Conclusion: The findings revealed that MPS reduced WP, which exacerbated CAB. By illustrating the link between MPS, WP, and CAB, it was highlighted that educational interventions for mothers to minimize parenting stress are likely to have a positive influence on children’s aggressive behavior. More implications are also discussed as a result of these findings.