Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1987 The marital adjustment processes of Korean working-class couples Sook-Hyun Lee Choi Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at:https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of theFamily, Life Course, and Society Commons Recommended Citation Choi, Sook-Hyun Lee, "The marital adjustment processes of Korean working-class couples " (1987).Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 8626. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/8626 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please [email protected]. 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For the Graduate College Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 1987 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION iv CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 Statement of the Problem 3 CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW 7 Definition of Marital Adjustment 7 Correlates of Marital Adjustment 12 Affectional correlates 14 Instrumental correlates 20 Adjustment to Parenthood 22 CHAPTER III. METHODS 27 Sample 27 The Interviews 28 Measures 30 Sampling Characteristics 32 Analyses 32 CHAPTER IV. RESULTS 34 The Korean Working-class Couples 34 Adjustment to Marriage 36 Family roles 39 Handling finances 42 Decision-making 44 Companionship 47 Communication and self-disclosure 49 ' Sexual adjustment 53 Marital conflicts 56 Results from Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) 58 iii Adjustment to Relationships with In-laws 60 Quality of interaction with in-laws 60 In-law problems 64 Conflict resolution 68 Benefits and costs of coresidence 70 Adjustment to Parenthood 72 Unplanned but expected parenthood 72 Crisis or transition 74 Changes in the marital relationship 75 CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS 79 REFERENCES 86 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 94 APPENDIX A. QUESTIONS FOR IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS 96 APPENDIX B. SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONNAIRE 101 APPENDIX C. SUMMARY TABLES OF FINDINGS 108 iv DEDICATION Dedicated to the Korean working-class couples who shared their stories of their marital lives with me and made this dissertation possible 1 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION In 1976 Lillian Rubin published an extraordinary study of American families. She interviewed in-depth fifty white, American, working-class families, in a suburb in California. In Worlds of Pain, Rubin was concerned with "class differences—differences in the subjective and objective experience that lead to differences between working-class and middle-class families in attitudes and behaviors, in ways of being and doing" (1976: 9). Her book was about some of the men and women who live in white working-class families which are so often neglected in marriage and family studies. It was about their origins, courtships, the quality of family life, their definitions of a good marriage, their work, and their dreams for the future. She described the life in the working-class family as worlds of pain. The families were suffering from early marriage, unplanned parenthood, insecure economic realities, distinct role segregation, and a lack of models for com­ panionate marriage—pains that are rooted in class situation and experience. Rubin's work is very culture-specific: white, American, working-class families in California. Would the findings be different for other cultures? Would we find a world of love or pain and the same family and heterosexual dynamics for Korean couples in Korea, some of whom have extended family