It seems that the Korean family is undergoing a gradual change not only in its form but also in its concept and this fact have been confirmed by several researchers.
In these days, the authors have observed freque ntly the female psychiatric patients in clinic whose distresses were precipitated by the conflicts that developed from the transition of family order to know the family concept of the married women. Thus, the authors conducted ahe survey on the 142 women of a rural. area-Danginkun, Chungcheongnamdo in order to.
The results and conclusions obtained from the survey were as follows. All these rural women do not have the traditional concept absolutely, nor absolutely modern one, but some of them are more prone to traditional and others, more modern in their family concept.
And also they express more traditional attitudes in some aspects and more modern ones in other aspects of family concept. For instance, 50% of them feel that their husbands are most important among the whole extended family members, while only 35% of them feel parents-in-law, most important: that is the authority of parents-in-law in traditional sense are falling.
But most of the women have a strong opinion that the family should continue through patrilineal succession and a strong desire for son.
The neccessity to have her own properties are claimed in only less than 20% of them. And most of them(80%) do not aggree that there would be a possibility of a divorce for them.
These differences of family concept seems to be caused by influences mostly from education and age. The higher the education they have, and the younger they are, the more modern their family concept appears. In addition. the husbands´ birth order, economic dependency on parents and the religious background tend to influence more or less the transition of the family concept. The wives whose husbands are not the oldest and only son, the wives whose huabands are economically independent from their parents or women with the Western religious background tend to be more modern and more apt to differentiate herself fron the extended family.
The characteristic of traditional patriarchal family which gives women an achieved status, while a described one to men, tend to remain generally.
We assume the conflicts which develops from the differences of family concept, especially, between generations have the possibility to cause greater problems in married women.
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