Burdge, Jennifer
Family Structures in Japan and Korea: How Are Children
Affected?
Faculty Mentor: Kristie Rowley, Sociology
The purpose of this project is to explore the relationship between various family
structures and childhood depression. I wanted to focus on how different family structures
in developed Asian countries, specifically Korea and Japan, impact negative and positive
behaviors of children, as well as mental illness.
Introduction
Recently, Japan and Korea have experienced increased strain in their society. In Japan,
citizens ranging from ages 55 to 64 years make up 38.3 percent of the population, and
those 65 years and over account for 24.8 percent of the population. This means those that
are 55 years old or more make up over 52 percent of the entire population (“East &
Southeast,” 2013). Due to the aging population, and declining birth rates, there is much
pressure put upon adults, young adults, and youth. This pressure has dramatically
changed marriage and divorce rates, education attainment, and employment, which all
impact a child’s life, and therefore their behavior. I hypothesized that children and youth,
within Korea and Japan, with intact families display less depressive behaviors than those
with non-traditional or dysfunctional families.
Within Asian culture, the significant changes in family structures are uncharacteristically
frequent. Unlike Western societies, Eastern cultures have only recently seen dramatic
changes in family structures and parenting styles. Within a society that is collectivistic, it
is shameful and dishonorable to the entire family for one to participate in divorce or
neglect their familial duties. However, as eastern society has become more influenced by
western civilizations, they are adopting more individualistic ideas, which promote the
importance of personal happiness and individuals over the family. Since this is a
relatively new phenomenon, it is vital that it be studied. As these families are becoming
more diverse in structure, so are the associated impacts on their children. By examining
new data, the increasing effects of family structures on children around the globe can be
more fully understood.
This project utilized 2011 KEEP data, which is a comprehensive seven year Korean study
that measures the academic and employment performance of Korean students from the
time they were in middle school into adulthood. They surveyed 5,090 people and
recorded their responses. Additionally, I used the Japanese Life Course Panel Survey
(JLPS) from the University of Tokyo. This survey aims to grasp causal relationships
between incidents or social/economic transformation and changes in people’s actions and
perceptions by surveying the youth, middle-aged, and high school graduates in Japan.
Through these sources, I am going to analyze the behavioral outcomes of citizens at
different stages in their lives that have been impacted by their family structures.
Unfortunately, due to a change in the JLPS access, I had to submit an application to
receive access to the data files. When we received them a few months later, all the
information was in Japanese and could not be easily translated. We tried using many
different methods, such as STATA, but the software could not translate Japanese data
into English. It took us many months to find an individual who could assist us in
translating a lot of Japanese data, and we were recently able to get it translated into
English. Over the next few months, we will continue to look at the Japanese data, create
data tables, and analyze the outcomes of various family structures.
For the Korean data, we recently created the tables of the 2011 KEEP data representing
each wave, which includes the education and salary of the parents as well as other
predicting variables such as stress level.
Results
Due to the delay on the Japanese data, and it being translated very recently, we have not
yet constructed a data table or analyzed the results of the data. As for the Korean data, we
have the results and recently created tables for each wave, but have not yet analyzed the
tables.
Discussion
Because we recently received the translation of the Japanese data and have not yet had
the opportunity to review or create a table for it, I will focus this discussion on the
Korean data. As we predicted, the majority of people in Korea live with their biological
mother and father, as is shown by the stats that 89.9 percent of participants described
their family structure in this way. Due to the Korean perspective of strong familial ties,
and putting their families before themselves, it is common that most people remain in
intact families. However, this does not mean that they do not experience family
disturbances or transitions. According to the descriptive statistics for all participants, an
average of 0.2 percent of individuals experienced family transitions. Even though this is a
part of the data, it is interesting that the survey did not include any options for people
with family structures that are different than both biological parents. This may reflect the
culture’s tendency to promote and acknowledge only a traditional family structure as a
real family. Although we wanted to explore more of the impacts of different family
structures, such as divorced, remarried, or other family structures, this data is limiting in
that it does not specify the population that experiences these structures. Additionally, we
were not able to draw conclusions about the effects of family structures and depression,
but will be including this in our final analysis once the preliminary analysis is complete.
Conclusion
Although we were not able to complete the creation of tables for Japanese data or the
analysis of the Korean data, we have been able to obtain the information we need in order
to draw conclusions from this data in the near future. The KEEP tables already show that
our research and predictions about the cultural view of Korea on family structures is
correct. However, it fails to identify family structures that are not traditional, which will
make it difficult to make conclusions about the impacts that various family structures
have on children and associated behaviors in Korea.
Work Cited
East & Southeast Asia: Japan. (2013). The World Factbook. Retrieved from
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook