Poster presentation

a. Rationale for the study

Previous studies suggested that children's mental health has been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, a threatening factor to their well-being.

Masten wrote in her book (Masten, 2020) about children's resilience, the ability to recover from and adapt to hardships and setbacks, saying, "A close relationship with someone is considered the most important factor for resilience, particularly for young children who are highly dependent on caregivers." Among caregivers, mothers have the closest and most influential connection with children. Therefore, this study conducted an international comparative analysis focusing on mothers' childrearing perceptions that predict children's resilience and happiness.

b. Research questions of the study

1. What kind of mothers' childrearing perceptions predict children's resilience and happiness (QOL)?
2. Does the impact of mothers' childrearing perceptions on children's resilience and happiness (QOL) differ depending on children's age and country?

c. Brief description

A questionnaire survey was conducted from August to November 2021. Using common question items, the survey targeted 1,973 mothers of 5-year-olds and 1,372 mothers of 7-year-olds in eight Asian countries. The CYRM-R scale developed by the Resilience Research Centre in Canada was employed to measure children's resilience and the KINDL scale developed by Ravens-Sieberer & Bullinger (2000) for children's QOL. Six-question items created in Japan asking about their feelings such as self-sacrifice and childrearing confidence were used to evaluate mothers' childrearing perceptions. Because there was no multicollinearity, each question item was treated as one variable.

A multiple regression analysis was performed using SPSS Statistics (27.0.1), with independent variables (mothers' childrearing perceptions) and dependent variables (children's resilience/QOL). The results were compared according to children's age and country.

d. Summary

1. Overall, the results revealed that mothers' childrearing confidence predicts children's resilience/QOL, regardless of their age and country.
2. Among six variables of mothers' childrearing perceptions, more variables for mothers of 5-year-olds predicted children's resilience/QOL than that of mothers of 7-year-olds.
3. The tendency of mothers' childrearing perceptions that were significant as predictor variables for children's resilience/QOL were sorted by country. The results show that the tendency of Japanese mothers and that of Taiwanese mothers are similar. In addition, the combination of countries with similar tendencies differed according to children's age.

The trend of similarity in Japan and Taiwan is probably due to the same geographical position of these two countries (East Asia) with similar developmental situations. In addition, the combination of countries with similar tendencies differed according to children's age (5 and 7-year-olds), which indicates that the resilience/QOL of preschool children and that of primary school children could be affected by different variables. Cultural differences between preschool and primary schools may explain this result. It was also confirmed that, for mothers of 5-year-olds, more variables of childrearing perceptions predict children's outcomes, while, for mothers of 7-year-olds, fewer and specific variables predict children's outcomes. Meanwhile, children whose mother had greater childrearing confidence showed higher resilience/QOL. In the future, more detailed studies are required to analyze the backgrounds of mothers with greater childrearing confidence, considering their demographic factors and environmental factors.

*This poster was presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of PECERA held in Hong Kong (hybrid conference), from July 8 to 10, 2022