This study defines signature strengths of young children and their mothers, analyzes how character strengths of young children vary depending on their age and gender as well as how character strengths of mothers differ from their age and working statu ...
This study defines signature strengths of young children and their mothers, analyzes how character strengths of young children vary depending on their age and gender as well as how character strengths of mothers differ from their age and working status, and finds out the relation between the character strengths and young children's child care center adjustment. Also, this study is to analyze the relationships among mothers' character strengths, parenting efficacy, and parenting behavior. The participants were 446 pairs of young children aged 4 to 6 and their mothers. The character strengths of young children were categorized by VIA (Values in Action) classification, based on free descriptions given by their mothers. The character strengths of the mothers were measured using VIA-72 (Peterson & Park, 2009; Peterson & Seligman, 2004), and child care center adjustment was measured by rating scale for child care center adjustment of young children (Park & Eom, 2012). Parenting efficacy was measured using `Perceived Parenting Competence (Floyd, Gilliom, & Costigan, 1998)', and parenting behavior was measured by `Iowa Parent Behavior Inventory-Mother Form (Crase, Clark, & Pease, 1979)'. Results showed that: (1) The signature strengths of the young children were social intelligence, kindness, love, hope, and persistence, while those of mothers were integrity, fairness, love, gratitude, and kindness. As young children get old, their open-mindedness, love, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty and excellence, and hope showed a tendency to decrease. In terms of gender differences, the boys showed more curiosity, persistence, and citizenship, whereas the girls showed more open-mindedness and social intelligence. With regard to the age of the mothers, the older ones showed more open-mindedness, love of learning, persistence, integrity, and spirituality than the younger ones. (2) Young children's character strengths related to child care center adjustment were open-mindedness, social intelligence, and leadership, while those were integrity, kindness, and fairness as for the mothers. (3) Most of mothers' character strengths were significantly positively related to parenting efficacy and parenting behavior. (4) Among mothers' character strengths, integrity and vitality influenced on parenting efficacy, whereas integrity, love, and persistence influenced on parenting behavior.