The Effect of Basic Psychological Needs of Mothers with Infants on Parenting Behaviors: The Moderated Mediating Effect of Parenting Stress by Social Support on Social Media

This study focuses on how parenting stress mediates the relationship between basic psychological needs and parenting behaviors in mothers with infants. The study also looks at how social support on social media might moderate this mediated relationship. To empirically verify a moderated mediation pathway, data were collected from 304 mothers of children under 3 years of age through paper questionnaires and online questionnaires and were analyzed using simple regression, multiple regression, process macros model 14 and bootstrapping in IBM SPSS Statistics 22 for Windows. The results are as follows. First, mothers’s parenting stress mediated the relationship between basic psychological needs and parenting behaviors. Second, mothers' parenting stress on parenting behavior was moderated by social support on social media. Parenting stress had a greater negative effect on positive parenting behavior when the level of social support on social media was low rather than high. Third, mothers’ social support on social media positively moderated both paths of this mediated relationship. Depending on the level of social support on social media, the indirect effect of basic psychological needs on parenting behaviors through parenting stress was significant. The findings of this study have important theoretical and practical implications for the use of Internet-based social support when managing basic psychological needs and parenting stress in relation to mothers' positive parenting behavior.