• The Mathematical Education
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.191-207
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• 2021

Recently, the number of multicultural families has significantly increased in Korea, and this trend creates a need to understand how successfully students from multicultural families achieve their mathematics learning. To understand and predict the changes in mathematics learning achievement of these students over time, we conducted in this study a latent growth mixture model analysis. The study findings show that the majority (92%) of the students from multicultural families experience a decrease in their mathematics achievement over time as their grade level goes up. It was found, in particular, that female students are likely to have lower initial achievements and rapid decline over time more than male students and that the decline over time was more severe for female students than their male counterparts. The findings of this study convey several implications on the how to support the students from multicultural families. First, the result of this study was different from the outcomes of previous studies that presented the income of the household and the education level of the students' parents as major factors that determine the academic achievement of the students from multicultural families. Furthermore, the study indicates the need for more research to identify variables related to the mathematical achievements of the students from multicultural families and the need to use these research findings to develop public support plans for the students from multicultural families.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.107-133
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• 2001

This study aims to understand the Process of Communality formation among the Families of Communal Childcare Cooperative. Ethnographic, in-depth interview and participant observation at field are used as method. The families of communal childcare cooperative form their communality through investment and harmony, making relationship, and struggles and overcoming the struggles. Each family is willing to put in their money and time for an unfamiliar group to organize and manage a community. They head for the same direction accepting the diversity of expectation and thought based on the diversity of environment of each family. They have interactions upon the basis of equality among the families. Sharing their unique cloture such as communal place(teojeon), common issues, same generation, unique terms, specific modes of speaking informally or nicknaming, they accept the diversities and head for the sameness to have a harmony. In the reset of forming relationship, these families transfer successfully from the field of I and my family to that of group. They escape from a sense of priority that concerns their own family first and then others. They come to be able to consider the group first. Besides, they come to assimilate themselves to the group by identification with the group. They come to form their identity and sense of membership of the group recognizing power of group they belong in their families and local society. The process of forming community among the families of cooperative has inescapable struggles. Each family becomes a real host of the cooperative in the process of overcoming the struggles and experiences a growth of individual and group in the process of looking for the ways of overcoming the struggles. In the end, the families cooperates and reestablish their community.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.147-160
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• 2015

This study analyzed the differences in adjustment and family environments of adolescents from three different family structures, using the KCYPS panel 4th wave data from first graders in middle schools. The participants of the study consisted of 1,715 adolescents in two-parent families, 79 adolescents in single-father families, and 113 adolescents in single-mother families. The data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and ANCOVAs. The findings of this study indicated that adolescents in two-parent families showed a lower level of physical symptoms than those in single-mother families and a lower level of participation in classwork than those in single-father families whereas adolescents in single-father families were more likely to be involved in delinquency than those from the other two family structures. In addition, significant differences were found in family environments including parents' physical health and life satisfaction, family economic status, parenting behaviors, and parents' absence at home after school. Parents in single-mother and single-father families were less healthy physically, showed lower levels of life satisfaction, reported less income, and spent less money for their children, compared to those in two-parent families. With regard to parenting behaviors, single fathers tended to be less warm toward and neglected their children more than single mothers and parents in two-parent families. Adolescents in single-father families were most likely to be left alone at home after school, followed by those in single-mother and two-parent families. The results suggested that specific attention needs to be paid to adolescents from single-father families in order to support their adjustment.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.105-122
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• 2013

The relationship between an adolescent and his/her parents is one of the most important relationships that can have a significant effect on adolescents' well-being and functioning. While there has been an increase in research on Asian American families in recent years, still much less is known about adolescent-parent relationships in these families. Asian American adolescents face some of the challenges that mainstream European American adolescents face, but their experiences are complicated by the cultural and immigration-related factors that have unique contribution to their relationships with their parents. As such, there is urgent need for research that identifies and provides a comprehensive understanding of factors that contribute to the experiences of Asian American immigrant families. The current paper provides a systematic look at adolescent-parent relationships in Asian American immigrant families using the Bronfenbrenner's ecological model. More specifically, this paper provides a succinct review of the literature on developmental issues, immigration, and culture-related factors that affect Asian American adolescent-parent relationships, and guided by Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory, an ecological framework of Asian American adolescent-parent relationships is proposed.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.350-358
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was done to better understand how sick children and their families define chronic illness; what behaviors they used for managing chronic illness; and how they perceived the socio-cultural context of Korea. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of qualitative studies. Articles on children with a chronic illness and their families located in electronic databases were selected for review. Twenty one qualitative studies were reviewed. Qualitative studies that had used an analysis tool, the Family Management Style Framework were reviewed. Results: Children with chronic illness and their families tended to accept illness as a negative outcome and thought that they were deprived of the context of normality. In the traditional Korean family style, parents-in-law demand absolute obedience from their daughter-in-law, leading to a conflict between the two parties, which, in turn, may have negatively affected their perceptions of chronic illness. Western and oriental medical treatments were used, and participants sought an array of folk remedies. Conclusion: Culturally specific findings can help to better understand the difficulties faced by children with a chronic illness and their families and can provide invaluable input into the development of culturally appropriate and sensitive nursing interventions.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.153-167
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties, conflicts, and communications between female-headed single parents and their children, their child rearing methods and attitude, and the political suggestions for the welfare in those families. The in-depth interviews were conducted for 7 women in Gyonggi-Do and Chungnam-Do on March 3-27, 2003. The interviewees were selected for the mothers whose children were enrolled either elementary schools or middle schools. The contents of interviews were receded to be analyzed by qualitative method. The results were as follows; first, female-headed single parent families were in low economic status with unstable employment condition. Secondly, women in that families were confronted with psychological problems because of their multiple roles and low income. Third, although they had a controlled child rearing method, they used much reinforcement and praise. Thirdly, they were in need of the aids for the basic life such as housings and their children's private institute expenses. Finally, they required the repealing of an existing birthright system.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.255-268
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to deepen our understanding about mothers' parenting stress in multi-cultural families. The study was conducted through in-depth interviews of 6 mothers from Mongolia, Philippines, and Japan who were living in Seoul. The findings of this study were as follows. First, mothers of multi-cultural families had difficulties of giving birth and child rearing, especially in the earliest years of their children. They were not fully adapted to the ways of living in Korea with little social support from family members and neighbors. Second, they were worried about their children's development, particularly language development due to their lack of understanding and fluency in Korean. Third, they were concerned about the cultural and racial discrimination against their children. They expected their children to be treated and respected equally like ordinary Korean children. Fourth, they were anxious about the fact that their children might not acquire the basic academic skills before they enter the elementary schools. Furthermore, they were worried that their children might not get as much educational support as they want. Fifth, despite the burden of mother's role in Korea, they wished to get a job to support their children for better education. In conclusion, the marriage immigrant mothers experienced the stress due to the lack of social support, the discrimination against immigrants, the possibilities of their children's delays in development, the disparity in the level of support for educating their children and the high expectations about their children's education in Korean society. Therefore it is necessary for the policy makers to consider more practical support system for the multi-cultural families in order for the marriage immigrant mothers to build up self-confidence in child rearing and educating their children.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.24 no.1 s.79
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• pp.141-158
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes of lives and problems of 'Kirogi'(or Wild Goose) fathers, who were called fathers in the 'Kirogi' families, South Korean families separated by an ocean. They almost sent too much money that were $50-100\%$ of their family income to the families abroad, and got economic pressures so severely. More or less, they sold their own real estates, moved to much smaller sized house. and often expended the saving money. Also, they had difficulties of taking care of their children and felt lonely very much. By the hand, they might experience the adaptation process through 3 stages-troubles, acception(or wandering or enjoy), adjust (or violation). They had three types of problems, that is, family relationship problem(the isolation), psychological problem(loneliness and self-control), economic problem (financial pressure and drop of economic status). They found the strategies to overcome these problems for themselves. Firstly, they took lots of methods like email, internet chatting, phone, etc. to communicate with their family everyday and made many events to strengthen the ties among families. Secondly, they got rid of stresses mainly by joining with their colleagues at work. Finally, they decided to lower the standard of living of their family in foreign country or tried to find their wives' jobs to prevent the financial hardship.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.493-505
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine the regional differences of 0-12 aged children's environment based on their parents' socioeconomic class and on the character of the settlement. One thousand and two hundred households were investigated and the results are as follows. It is revealed that families in low socio-economic class are more likely to be exposed to noise and home crowdedness. Families living in spontaneous settlement are deprived of natural light and the roads to their homes are steep and narrow. Low income families face a housing affordability crisis. Most of them pay housing rent on monthly basis. The basic infrastructure of low income neighborhood is lacking convenient facilities like shopping centers, public transportation systems, banks, public parks, and libraries. This lack of facilities is more severe in spontaneous settlement. Instead, bars and taverns are located in their neighborhood. Accessibility to parks and resource centers is an important factor that makes both middle and low income families consider their neighborhood to be positive and this condition is counted better in social housing area than in spontaneous settlement. On the contrary, social networks like friends and relatives are strong in spontaneous settlement and families in poverty value these relationships. Such networks are weak in social housing area and this difference is not related to their residential period. Low income families living in social housing area are more pessimistic about their future and this view might result from their counterpart middle class neighbors and the weak social networks.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.75-85
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• 2014

Family life culture embodies the ways of thinking and behaving among family members in everyday lives. With a noticeable growth of multicultural families since 2000, there has been an inflow of other culture into the existing Korean family life culture. This new phenomenon signals a potential transformation of the family life culture in Korean society. To forecast such changes, we compared the family life culture of Korean-Vietnamese multicultural families (as reported by 104 Korean husbands and their Vietnamese wives) with that of mainstream Korean families (as reported by 108 Korean married men and 92 Korean married women) by comparing family ritual practices and family values. We also sought to identify whether two cultures in Korean-Vietnamese multicultural families harmoniously coexist or clash by examining differences within couples. Results showed that Korean married men and Korean husbands of Vietnamese women were very similar in terms of family ritual practices and family values. Differences emerged between Korean husbands and their Vietnamese wives. Specifically, Korean husbands endorsed more traditional gender role beliefs while their family values were less patriarchal compared to their wives. Results suggest that more flexible gender role beliefs reported by Vietnamese wives may be a source of conflict in Korean-Vietnamese multicultural families. At the same time, it may be a driving force of change in their existing family life culture. It will be worthwhile to pay attention in future research to whether and how patriarchal values and flexible gender role beliefs would continue to coexist or modify each other.