In modern society, there is a tendency toward having nuclear families, comprising only parents and children. Children are receiving less training at home, owing to an increase in the mother’s activities within society; therefore, given the gravity o...
In modern society, there is a tendency toward having nuclear families, comprising only parents and children. Children are receiving less training at home, owing to an increase in the mother’s activities within society; therefore, given the gravity of childrearing, particularly as regards the importance of education, the requirement of a father’s participation in raising the children has strongly increased. Under these circumstances, the level of satisfaction that the husband and wife feel with their marriage and the degree to which their childrearing attitudes correspond are increasingly important factors in childrearing.
The present study was undertaken among couples with young children to investigate the relationship between the level of correspondence in the spouses’ attitudes toward childrearing and their respective levels of marital satisfaction, and to present a good model of a parental attitude in forming a positive, effective parent-child relationship and satisfaction with the conjugal bond.
The themes of this study were as follows:
1. What is the degree to which the spouses’attitudes toward childrearing correspond and is the degree of correspondence affected by background variables such as a disparity in the spouses’ type of profession, educational level, or age?
2. What are spouses’ levels of marital satisfaction and is the level of satisfaction affected by background variables such as a disparity in the spouses’ type of profession, educational level, or age?
3. What is the relationship between the degree of correspondence and marital satisfaction and is this relationship affected by background variables such as a disparity in the spouses’ type of profession, educational level, or age?
The subjects of this research were 193 couples of one four- to five-year-old child attending one of five kindergartens located in the areas of Seoul and Gyeong-gi Province.
As a parental attitude instrument, aquestionnaire was constructed based on the Korean version (Lee, Won-young, 1983) of Shaefer’s MBRI (Maternal Behavior Research Instrument), composed of 48 questions, i.e. twelve questions in each of the following four childrearing attitude categories: effectiveness, restrictiveness, control and autonomy. The yardstick for measuring the degree of correspondence of the spouses’ attitudes was the calculation method created by Kee Young Choi (1991), which assigned points, using a five-point scale, to the different responses of the husband and the wife to the same question.
In order to measure the level of the martial satisfaction, a version adapted for use in Korea (Go, Jung-ja & Kim, Kap-suk, 2000) of the Martial Satisfaction measurement (Olson, 1982), a subscale of ENRICH (Enriching & Nurturing Relationship Issues, Communication and Happiness), was used.
The collected data was analyzed using SPSS 11.0. Mean and the standard deviation was calculated for descriptive statistics andthe t-test, one-way ANOVA and Duncan post-hoc tests.
The results of this study are as follows:
First, the survey showed that most of the spouses tended to have loving attitudes toward their child, but among both the mothers and the fathers significant differences existed in attitudes toward childrearing depending on the individual’s academic background, especially in the subareas of effectiveness and loving attitudes.
Second, generally both the father and mother of each child were satisfied with their married life, though the fathers had a higher level of satisfaction than did the mothers. There was also a positive correlation between the parental educational level and their marital satisfaction and between their loving childrearing attitudes and marital satisfaction.
Third, the higher was the degree of correspondence of the spouses’ childrearing attitudes in the subarea of affection, the greater the level of marital satisfaction. In regard to childrearing attitude subfactors, there was a significant correlation between a father’s marital satisfaction and his childrearing attitude in the loving and regulative categories; for the mothers, a significant correlation existed between her marital satisfaction and the loving, regulative, and even denial categories.