Abstract

The purposes of this study were to investigate the interrelationships between family functioning, marital conflicts, conflict coping strategies and couple's psychological adjustment, and to identify the influence of each variables on couple's psychological adjustment. The subjects of this study were 532 couples with teen-aged children in seoul. the major findings were as follows ; 1) The couples' perception of their family funstioning(family cohesion and family adaptability) had linear relations with psychological adjustment(marital satisfaction, self-esteem, and depression). 2) For both spouses, marital conflicts, avoidance strategy, action-expression strategy, emotional strategy and outside-aid seeking strategy were negatively related to family functioning, marital satisfaction and self-esteem, and were positively related to depression, Rational coping strategy was positively related to marital satisfaction and self-esteem, and were negatively related to depression. 3) Couples' marital satisfaction were significantly affected by marital conflicts, avoidance strategy, family functioning and family income. Couples' self-esteem were significantly affected by rational coping strategy, family functioning, family income and avoidance strategy. Couples depression were significantly affected by marital conflicts, emotional strategy, and avoidance & action expression strategy. In addition, wives' self-esteem were affected by family functioning. And there were differences between wives and husbands in the findings.

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