Recently, our society’s interest in multi-cultural families tends to extend from the international marriage women immigrants to children from multi-cultural families. As of 2015, children from multi-cultural families account for 2.2% of the current ...
Recently, our society’s interest in multi-cultural families tends to extend from the international marriage women immigrants to children from multi-cultural families. As of 2015, children from multi-cultural families account for 2.2% of the current elementary school students, which will steadily keep increasing in the future. Since most children from multi-cultural families are born and grow in South Korea, it has been understood that there would be no great problem in adapting themselves to Korean culture; however, there is a cultural difference in their family, as well. Due to the cultural mixture between father and mother, there is a cultural difference between the family and the community, and there is a problem in adaptation in the mainstream society after entering school, which cause a problem of overlapping cultural adaptation.
Thus, this study set up the parent-child relationship as an external factor and spiritual well-being and ego-resilience as internal factors. Family relationship, especially, the parent-child relationship forms most relationships and attachment in children, and the parent-child relationship in children from multi-cultural families can function as the concept of a single resource and can also be approached from social capital in the family. Thus, many studies have been conducted on that, recently.
In addition, this study focused on spiritual well-being and ego-resilience as factors affecting cultural adaptation, of the variables presented through the preceding studies, because children from multi-cultural families suffer from negative social glances or have difficulty in adapting themselves, these two factors are factors that can play important roles for them in overcoming the difficulties in everyday life.
This study aims to investigate whether there are differences in parent-child relationship, ego-resilience, spiritual well-being and cultural adaptation according to the sociodemographic background of children from multi-cultural families and to analyze the impacts of their parent-child relationship on their cultural adaptation through spiritual well-being and ego-resilience, that is, to verify the mediating effects.
For the analysis, 873 copies of a questionnaire were distributed to 4th through 6th grade children from multi-cultural families at 119 multi-cultural education-oriented schools and elementary schools for multi-cultural preparatory elementary schools located in seven regions across the country (Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, Incheon, Gangwon-do, Chungcheong-do, Gyeongsang-do, Jeolla-do and Jeju-do). 727 copies were collected, and finally, 706 copies were used in an analysis.
As for the method of the analysis, scales with sub-factors were treated by each sub-factor while with scales without sub-factors, the items of factor load were summed up and two packages were made for variables to constitute measuring variables. In order to compare the differences according to the sociodemographic background, a t-test and a one-way ANOVA were conducted. For an analysis of the causality between the variables and verification of the study model, structural equation modeling was conducted. In order to verify the mediating effect and significance, a bootstrapping test and a Sobel test were conducted.
An inquiry was conducted in this study into whether there would be any differences in the cultural adaptation of children from multi-cultural adaptation according to their sociodemographic background, and as a result, according to all factors, there were higher differences in girls, children with a religion and those whose parents had a religion. Also, there were more significant differences as they had higher academic performance and economic level, and their parent who came from a foreign country had better Korean language skills.
Next, the main research results found through structural equation modeling are summarized as follows:
First, the parent-child relationship had a positive direct effect on spiritual well-being and ego-resilience, but there was no significant direct effect on children's cultural adaptation.
Second, as a result of an inquiry into the impacts of parent-child relationship on children's cultural adaptation through spiritual well-being and ego-resilience, the parent-child relationship had indirect effects on cultural adaptation through the mediating effects of spiritual well-being and ego-resilience.
This is a finding that there is a clear effect of parent-child relationship as many studies have emphasized the importance of the parent-child relationship, but there are effects mediated by spiritual well-being and ego-resilience in addition to an independent effect. In addition, in this study, no direct effect of the parent-child relationship is established, so a possibility that the parent-child relationship variable itself may be a variable that has only an indirect effect can be considered.
This study provides an implication that it extended the width of the topic and subject of studies of the parent-child relationship. It found correlations of the parent-child relationship with spiritual well-being and ego-resilience, and by conducting a nationwide study with children from multi-cultural families, it brought up the importance of the mediating effects. The impact of the parent-child relationship on children's adaptation has been supported through the preceding studies, but in addition to that, this study verified the mediating effect of the parent-child relationship on the children's internal factor.
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