This research is to study the perception of adolescents about divorce and remarriage, and find if there's any difference because of their gender, school, residential district. The purpose for this research is to give the basic information for the edu...
This research is to study the perception of adolescents about divorce and remarriage, and find if there's any difference because of their gender, school, residential district. The purpose for this research is to give the basic information for the educational program development and the counseling for teenagers who should adjust themselves to parents' divorce and remarriage in a family, by studying the teenager's demand and managing method for parent's divorce and remarriage.
I made a research on this subject to 570 students who went to middle school and high school in Kangwon Province. As for the examination tools, studying perception on divorce and remarriage and the different perception because of gender, school, residential district, I chose the questionnaire for perception criteria about divorce and remarriage which were developed by Jun, suk-young(1996) and changed it for this research.
For studying the teenager's demand and managing method for divorce and remarriage, I chose 7 questions asking the demand and managing method for parent's divorce and remarriage which were used by Lee, jung-rim (2000), and modified it for the purpose of this research. The Collected data were analyzed using SPSS Win 12.0 program. I used the Frequency Analysis to study teenager's global perception for divorce and remarriage, and used Cross-tabs analysis to study the difference in teenager's perception on divorce and marriage because of their background factors.
Major findings can be summarized as follows
First, generally teenagers have a positive perception on divorce and remarriage but have a negative perception on divorce which were made before they were grown up.
Second, there is a different perception for the subject because of their background factor. When it comes to a gender, girls have more positive perception on divorce and remarriage than boys. As for school, high school students have more positive perception than middle school students. According to research, as for divorce high school students think that the economic power of married couple is important to maintain marriage. Also they accepted positively about divorce if the married couple don't love and they thought in a positive way about remarriage if couple really love. It reflects the fact - teenagers think that love is the important factor in marriage and the maintenance of marriage. At the same time they think the economic power is important in keeping the marriage.
Third, as for their demand and managing method for divorce and remarriage, they collect the information about divorce and remarriage through mass media. Therefore it is needed to deal with a various aspects about divorce and remarriage in the mass media. And they want to solve the problem by counseling with their parents, because they regard divorce and remarriage as a problem for all family members. In case there's a problem because of their parents' divorce and remarriage, most of students solved it for themselves or counseled with their friends. They wanted to get a help from teachers in school or counseling teachers.
In this result of research we can see teenager's value that love is the most important factor in maintaining marriage. This reflects the value system that the meaning for marriage is love between couple and without love married couple can divorce. According to this result there should be various educational programs to teach adolescents diverse aspects of marriage and a lot of functions of family in school. Because teenagers get the information about divorce and remarriage through mass media, they had a distorted and partial image rather than a realistic perception for them.
TV programs should be seriously considered when teenagers watch TV and there should be the rewriting for the fairy tales that tells the distorted image about remarriage family. And also adults including the teachers and counselors should be changed. For teenagers to have an objective perception about marriage, divorce and remarriage and face to their parents' divorce and remarriage reasonably and rationally, In the first place parents must be taught to be responsible for their marriage. And also there should be educational support to minimize adolescent's trauma because of the change of family and have teenagers adjust themselves to the change after their parents' divorce.
In reality even though teenagers have a problem, it's not easy to meet a specialist for counseling. Teenagers have to solve a lot of problem because of a various type of family. In this situation, we need a suitable arrangement for counselors in school and have to prepare system for adolescents. There should be a various support that can help teenagers understand their problem better and adjust themselves well in a given situation.