National or Ethnic Language Fluency and the Quality of Relationship between Parents and Children ...

National or Ethnic Language Fluency and the Quality of Relationship between Parents and Children in Multicultural Family in Korea

Jisu Park

Youjin Koh

Yoonsun Han

Korea has entered a multicultural society. As the number of multicultural family grows, identifying factors that facilitate family adjustment seems important. The relationship between parent and children can be a crucial predictor in family adjustment. Thus this study examined how the concordance/ discordance in language fluency affects youth's satisfaction towards their parents. This research employed the 2012 National Survey of Multicultural Families (NSMF) using 9 to 24 year-old multicultural youth’(N=4314) data and that of their parents. Since some youth were from the same family, we used Multilevel Models to take into account youth-level data (level-1) and family-level data (level-2). The major findings are as follows: First, concordance/discordance in both national and ethnic language fluency is associated with the quality of relationship between parents and youth. Second, youth’s satisfaction toward parents is highest when foreign parent and youth are fluent in Korean, as well as, when Korean parent and youth are fluent in ethnic languages. These findings can suggest directions for Korean multicultural policy to encourage fluency in both Korean and ethnic languages in multicultural families.

Key words : Korean immigrant youth, language proficiency, ethnic language use, relationship between parents and children, multicultural family.

THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF CULTURE AND SOCIAL ISSUES 21(4), 2015.11, 649-669(21 pages)