Objective: This study intended to analyze parenting characteristics, difficulties
and support needs of multi-cultural families that had children under 3 years old,
in order to develop their supporting resources.
Methods: This study performed semi-structured interviews with 7 mothers from
multi-cultural families that had their young children enrolled at child care and
education centers in Gyeonggi Do. The interview data transcribed were analyzed
using the successive contents analysis, and led to 4 themes and 12 sub-themes.
Results: First, the mothers from multi-cultural families were married without understanding
the Korean language and culture. Second, the multi-cultural mothers
didn’t properly respond to their children's needs in interaction and language
aspects. As a result, the multi-cultural support centers and child care and education
centers gave help to them. Third, in the view of the difficulties facing
mothers, parenting problems caused by the lack of information concerning child
education, the biased burden of parenting, and the different parenting values of
Korean families were all expressed by the mothers. Fourth, regarding support
needs, providing individual professional support for children and child-raising
support for mothers, customized language and employment support for mothers
and parenting education for fathers and family education on multi-culturalism
are needed.
Conclusion/Implications: Suggestions for decreasing the difficulties facing
multi-cultural families that had children under 3 years old were discussed.