Abstract

• The main purpose of this study was to investigate the parent-child relationship and social emotional development of preschool-aged children. In this study, a quantitative research design and descriptive survey method were used. As a sample, a total of 300 parents of preschool-aged children (150 from public preschools and 150 from private preschools) were randomly selected from Yangon and Ayeyarwaddy regions in Myanmar. As the research instruments, Child-Parent Relationship Scale (Pianta, 1998) modified by Driscoll and Pianta (2011) and Social-Emotional Development Questionnaire developed by Mardell and Dorothea (2011) were applied. Independent samples t-test and ANOVA results confirmed that significant differences were found in parent child relationship by parent’s gender, birth order and mother’s education level. In addition, independent samples t-test and ANOVA results also confirmed that significant differences were found in social-emotional development of children by type of school, family type and mother’s education level. Next, the Pearson product-moment correlation results revealed that positively significant relationship was found between parent-child relationship and social-emotional development (r = .579, p < .01) and also positively significant relationships were found among conflict subscale, closeness subscale and dependency subscale of parent-child relationship and social-emotional development (r = .583, p < .01), (r = .252, p < .01) and (r = .264, p < .01) respectively. The results of this study revealed that preschool children who had better parent-child relationship would be higher in their social-emotional development. Moreover, parent-child relationship and its subscales significantly contributed about 33% of the variance in social emotional development of preschool children. Finally, this study suggested that parents should try to improve and strengthen positive parent-child relationship in order to help their children higher social-emotional development. Therefore, it was vital to emphasize the parent-child relationship and social-emotional development of preschool-aged children.