The Relationships of the Middle-aged Men and Women's Gender-role Identity, Marital Conflict, and Psychological Adjustment

중년기 남녀의 성역할 정체감과 부부갈등 및 심리적 적응의 관계

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships of married middle-aged men and women's gender-role identity, marital conflicts and psychological adjustment. Psychological adjustment was composed of mid life crisis, depression, and perceived happiness. The data of the study were collected from 397 married, middle aged men and women from 40 years to 59 years-old by using self-administered questionnaire method. The results showed that gender role identity was different according to sex. In addition, women's perceived level of marital conflict was found to be significantly different according to their gender role identity, indicating that androgynous women reported the lowest level of marital conflict. However, men's gender role conflict was not related to their marital conflict. Furthermore, men's psychological adjustment level was not different according to their gender role identity, while women's psychological adjustment differed, indicating that androgynous women reported the lowest level of psychological adjustment and the undifferentiated women the highest level of psychological adjustment. Finally, the result indicated that for both men and men, marital conflict were positively correlated with mid-crisis and depression, and negatively related with happiness.