The purpose of the present study was to examine the proactive socialisation beliefs
(goals, attributions, strategies) of Korean mothers regarding
preschoolers’ social skills (sharing, controlling negative emotions, and
helping others). Participants were 116 mothers in Seoul, Korea. The reasons that
mothers provided for the importance of each skill, their causal attributions for the
acquisition of those skills, and the socialisation strategies that would be most
effective, were targeted. Korean mothers rated controlling negative emotions as less
important than sharing and helping others, and were least likely to attribute the
importance of social skills to social conventional reasons and provide different
ratings and reasons, for the importance of children’s skills depending on
the sex of their child. Specifically, mothers posit more moral reasons for girls,
but more developmental reasons for boys. Also, Korean mothers made more external
causal attributions than internal attributions for being good at sharing and
helping, whereas emotion regulation was thought to be equally a factor of external
and internal reasons. In terms of socialisation strategies, Korean mothers endorsed
a higher proportion of modelling than any other strategy for the socialisation of
all three social skills, regardless of the sex of the child. In conclusion, Korean
mothers’ beliefs were related to both traditional and modern Korean
ideologies and values in meaningful ways. This study highlights the significance of
cultural ideologies regarding children and the family in the study of maternal
beliefs regarding child socialisation.
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