Association Between Latent Profiles of Parental Resources and Home Environment Quality: Moderated Mediation of Parental Involvement in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Objective: This study examined how patterns of parental resources shape home-environment quality and whether parental involvement in early childhood education moderates this process. Parental resources were conceptualized as a multidimensional construct encompassing parental self-efficacy, parenting stress, marital conflict, and father’s involvement.Methods: Data were drawn from the fourth (2011) and sixth (2013) waves of the Panel Study on Korean Children, with a final sample of 1,019 parent dyads of preschool-aged children. Latent profile analysis (LPA) identified subgroups of families with distinct constellations of parental resources. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping was used to evaluate tested mediation effects via parent-child interaction frequency, along with the moderating and moderated mediation effects of parent workshops and homeroom-teacher consultations.Results: Five parental-resource profiles emerged: deficit-conflict, father’s stress overload, resource imbalancelow father’s involvement, father’s stress overload-stable relationship, and stable. These profiles differed significantly in parent-child interaction frequency and home-environment quality. The deficit-conflict profile showed strong negative direct effects on both outcomes, whereas resource imbalance-low father’s involvement showed a significant indirect effect through reduced interaction frequency. Parent workshops increased interaction frequency across profiles, while homeroom-teacher consultations produced significant moderating and moderated mediation effects exclusively for the resource imbalance-low father’s Involvement profile.Conclusion: The effects of parental involvement in early childhood education vary systematically by parentalresource profile, underscoring the need for type-specific, tailored interventions rather than universal approaches. These findings illustrate the value of integrating LPA with moderated mediation modeling to capture heterogeneity in family processes.