Parental Stress of Korean Immigrants in the U.S.: Meeting Child and Youth's Educational Needs amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background and Purpose:

The public health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted racially and ethnically diverse families in the U.S. In education, immigrant families have struggled with child care and educational support due to moving to online instruction in most U.S. schools and programs. This study investigates Korean immigrants’ parental stress amid the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when they experience difficulties trying to meet their children’s educational needs. The research questions include investigating the association between parental stress and difficulties meeting educational needs, language barriers, and challenges with online learning tools. Additionally, the questions explore the relationship between parental stress and factors such as resilience and social support, as well as the moderating effects of resilience and social support on the relationship between difficulties meeting educational needs and parental stress.

Methods:

Korean immigrant parents residing in the U.S. were invited to complete an online survey through purposive sampling. The final sample included a total of 341 Korean immigrant parents from 42 U.S. states. Reliable and valid scales already existing were chosen to measure parental stress, resilience, and social support. Items that did not have existing valid and reliable scales were developed by the research team in both Korean and English languages. Three models of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions were conducted to examine the associations between parent-reported difficulties meeting the children’s educational needs, parental stress, and the immigrant parents’ resilience and social support.

Results:

Korean immigrant parents experienced significant parental stress in (1) supporting children’s educational needs in general and (2) experiencing language barriers when meeting their children’s educational needs in isolated situations amid the pandemic. In addition, these parents’ resilience and social support significantly influenced their stress during the pandemic: higher levels of parent resilience and social support indicated a strong and positive impact on considerably-relieved parental stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusions and Implications:

Parent participants indicated increased parental stress when assisting with their children’s educational needs and when the parents have limited English proficiency to support the children’s educational needs. Resilience and social support decreased parental stress. Findings from the study provide implications regarding the importance of providing comprehensive social support as well as goal-oriented resilience programs for immigrant parents. This study meaningfully contributed to the globally-growing body of literature on parental experiences amid the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating parental stress of Korean immigrant families in the U.S.