College students’ perceptions of filial obligation can differ across individual, familial, and cultural contexts. However, comparative and empirical studies on this issue are scarce. To address the gap in literature, we examined how American and Korean cultural contexts differently affect the association between two types of parent-child relationship quality (mother-child dyad and father-child dyad) and two types of filial obligation (instrumental support and emotional support). In addition, we examined how children’s gender moderates the above associations. We collected a sample of 500 college students, ages 18 to 25 years, from private universities in the United States (n = 224) and South Korea (n = 276). Regarding American college students, results showed that mother-child relationship quality was positively associated with emotional support of filial obligation. In terms of Korean college students, however, mother-child relationship quality was positively associated with two types of filial obligation respectively. These results indicate that Korean college students consider both instrumental and emotional support as important values of filial obligation, whereas American college students consider emotional support as the more important value of filial obligation compared to instrumental support. Regarding the moderating effect, we found that children’s gender moderated the associations between father-child relationship quality and two types of filial obligation in Korean college students. We suggest that Korean cultural contexts based on the tradition of patriarchy and gender socialization affect the association between father-child relationship quality and filial obligation.
Objective
To examine individuals' attitudes about parental disclosures to children.
Background
Parents' disclosures can either help or hinder children's coping with family‐related stressors. Knowing what is appropriate to disclose, however, is not always clear.
Method
We examined judgments about parental disclosures using a mixed‐methods approach. In 18 factorial vignettes, information about a parent's marital status and gender and a child's age and gender were randomly varied; a convenience sample of 561 individuals evaluated the appropriateness of parental disclosures. An open‐ended question asked respondents to explain their answers.
Results
Quantitative data indicated that children's ages and parents' gender affected attitudes about disclosures, but parents' marital status and children's gender did not. Qualitative responses indicated that participants were concerned about parental disclosures putting children in the middle of parents' problems. Disclosures about sexual issues were considered inappropriate for school‐aged children but appropriate for adolescents.
Conclusion
There is consensus on evaluations of the appropriateness of specific parental disclosures. Negative disclosures are perceived as potentially harmful to offspring regardless of parents' marital status. Some topics are seen as more acceptable to disclose to adolescents than to younger children, and evaluations of specific disclosures differ for fathers and mothers.
Implications
A better understanding of how people evaluate parental disclosures may be useful to family therapists, parent educators, and others who work with families.
Given roles and expectations of father involvement in South Korea are in transition from traditional breadwinner to an involved caregiver to children, it is plausible that Korean fathers show diverse involvement behaviors in the contexts of work, family, and parenting. Using a person-centered approach, we explored if there were groupings of Korean fathers who could be identified from their involvement with their children. We also examined if those subgroup memberships were related to various factors in work, family, and parenting domains. With a sample of 212 married working fathers and the 12 items of involvement behaviors, we found four heterogeneous subgroups of people: low-involved, accessibility-focused, involved-but-less-accessible, and highly involved fathers. Significant differences among the four profiles were also found regarding various factors such as job stress, work and family conflict, work schedule, maternal employment, parenting satisfaction, and perceived level of involvement. Suggestions for future research, practitioners, and policymakers were discussed.
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