Abstract
In this study, the characteristics and patterns of family problems were explored. What constituted family problems, and how those evolved over the period of drastic changes in the Korean society were examined, by analyzing articles published from the 1940s to the 1980s in the four major national newspapers in Korea. A total of 6542 articles related to family problems in the four newspapers, Chosun, Dong-A, Kyunghyang, and Seoul, were used for the content analysis of this study. The main categories of family problems were classified as poverty, marital issues, issues related to children and adolescents, elderly issues, problems in the family as an institution, and the so-called family-lag problem. Each of these categories consisted of several subcategories: The poverty-related problems included the problems caused by difficulty in making a living and instability of living, for example. The marital issues category consisted of conflicts between the couple, unfaithful spouses, domestic violence, divorce, and so on. Issues related to children and adolescents included juvenile delinquency, difficulty in bringing up children, child abuse, single motherhood, and underage household heads, for example. The elderly issues included the anxiety over the aging society, support for the elderly, conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, alienation of the elderly, etc. Problems in the family as an institution consisted of the legal issues in such areas as marriage, succession of the family head, and adoption. Lastly, the family-lag problem included confusion over family values, and conflict caused by the inconsistency between consciousness and actual behavior related to the family or family crisis. From the 1940s to the 1980s, family-lag was the most common problem (26.2% of the total articles), followed by issues related to children and adolescents (23.1%), poverty (16.2%), marital issues (15.9%), elderly issues (12.4%), and problems in the family as an institution (6.0%). During the 1940s and the 1950s, poverty was a prominent problem, and in the 1960s, issues related to children and adolescents were most commonly addressed in the articles. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the family-lag problem was the most frequently addressed.