Explaining School Adjustment Difference among Children of Immigrant Mothers in Taiwan: The Mediators of Co-Parenting and Parenting Self-Efficacy

This study examines whether the mother’s nationality influenced children’s school adjustment and whether four dimensions of co-parenting and the mother’s parenting self-efficacy mediated the relationship between the mother’s nationality and children’s school adjustment in Taiwan. Teacher-student relationships and peer relationships were viewed as indicators of school adjustment. We analyzed data from 484 mother-child dyads, which were available from a 2015 project on the association between immigrant mothers’ parenting efficacy, co-parenting, and school-aged children’s life adjustment using structural equation modeling. Results revealed that Indonesian mothers’ offspring had poorer relationships with their teachers than children with mothers from mainland China, but mothers’ nationalities did not affect children’s relations with peers. With regard to children’s relationships with peers and teachers, children whose mothers were from Vietnam scored lower than their counterparts whose mothers were proficient in the Chinese language, but the difference was not significant. Our findings showed that undermining co-parenting and maternal parenting self-efficacy, rather than supportive co-parenting, spousal support, spousal involvement, child’s characteristics, and family backgrounds, fully mediated the association between mothers’ nationalities and the child’s relationship with teachers. Moreover, supportive co-parenting was found to be positively related to mothers’ parenting self-efficacy.