Intergenerational dynamics in three-generation families: Adult's emotional ties and their psychological well-being
Abstract
The present study tested the path model which described the relationships among the past and the present emotional dynamics of Korean adult families across three generations and young adults' psychological well-being. Bowen's family system theory and the family development perspective were utilized as guiding the theoretical frameworks. Data were collected through survey data from 164 Korean young adults and from their parents regarding grandparent-parent differentiation in parents' young adulthood, adult children's recalled negative parenting experience in childhood, current parent-adult child differentiation, and adult children's psychological well-being indexed by depression, anxiety, and self-esteem. Differentiation was conceptualized as a dyadic variable representing patterns of distance regulation counterbalanced between connectedness and separateness. Multiple regression analyses were conducted for 151 sets of cases to test six path models for maternal and paternal lineages separately on three dependent variables (i.e., depression, self-esteem, and anxiety). The overall findings revealed that in maternal models, grandfather-mother differentiation and grandmother-mother differentiation in mothers' young adulthood affected mothers' later negative parenting practice toward their children, which in turn, strongly affected the current mother-adult child differentiation. For the paternal models, only the grandmother-father differentiation in fathers' young adulthood was influential to fathers' later parenting practice toward their children, which also affected the current father-adult child differentiation Adult children's well-being variables were mostly influenced by their stress experienced outside of the family. Additional analyses revealed that in maternal lineage, it is individuation rather than intimacy that is transmitted across generations. Age, gender, and age gap between parent and child differentially affected intergenerational relations depending on the kin gender and on which emotional dimension is investigated.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Altergott, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology|Social psychology
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