워킹맘의 온라인 여가로서의 온라인 커뮤니티 이용과 사회적 지지, 일-가족 전이, 그리고 삶의 질 간의 구조적 영향관계 연구

Employed mothers often experience leisure constraints while dealing with multiple roles as mothers and workers. Recently, online communities have been considered as popular online leisure among mothers as well as major sources of social support to cope with their perceived social isolation and overloaded daily life. The purpose of this study was to examine the structural relationships among online community use as online leisure, social support, work-life spillover, and quality of life with respect to working mothers. To collect the data, a self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 178 working mothers who are members of mothers’ online communities. Structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. The results of this study indicate that online community use exerts a significantly positive influence on both informational and emotional aspects of social support. However, only emotional support influences positive work-life spillover significantly, which in turn, exerts a positive influence on quality of life. This study contributes to a better understanding of the life and leisure among working mothers who have been marginalized in leisure research. Highlighting the role of mothers’ online communities as dependable sources of social support, this study suggests theoretical and practical implications to enhance quality of life among working mothers.