유아기 자녀를 둔 아버지가 인식한 어머니의 문지기 역할이 양육효능감에 미치는 영향과 결혼만족도의 매개효과

The Effect of Maternal Gate-keeping Behavior perceived by fathers of early childhood on Paternal Parenting Efficacy and the Mediating Role of Marital Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating effect of marital satisfaction in the relationship between mothers’ gate-keeping behavior and fathers’ parenting efficacy. The subjects of the study were 267 fathers with young children aged 2 to 6. The data were collected by the fathers’ responses using the parental gate-keeping scale (Van Egeren, 2000), the marital satisfaction scale (Roach, Frazier, & Boeden, 1981), and parenting sense of competence scale (Gibaud-Walstone & Wandersman, 1978). In order to examine the general tendency of the study variables, descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated. PROCESS macro by Hayes(2013) was used to investigate the mediating model. The results showed that both mothers’ gate-keeping behavior and marital satisfaction had a direct impact on the paternal parenting efficacy, which was partially mediated by marital satisfaction. The more frequently the mothers’ played the gate-opening role that helped the fathers have positive relationships with their children, the higher the level of marital satisfaction. Consequently, the level of paternal parenting efficacy increased. In contrast, when the mothers played the gate-closing role frequently, the level of marital satisfaction of the father was low, which in turn resulted in a low level of paternal parenting efficacy.