| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 輔導與諮商研究所 === 100 === The purpose of this study was to investigate “the experiences of marital relationships in extended families”. The main research goals included (1) to understand the domestic dynamics and marital relationships among couples in extended families, (2) to investigate difficulties of marital relationships among couples in extended families , and (3) to examine the adjustments and adaptations of those couples who live within extended families.
The study employed a qualitative research method by conducting detailed interviews, collected data from married couples, and analyzed data based on thematic analysis. The study attempted to construct a more systematic description of marital relationships in three generation families from different points of views of a husband and a wife. The interviewees included four couples from extended families. The research results were as follow.
The effect of inter-generation relationship within extended families on marital relationships. The influences included: “the household becomes the center of the entire family: in-laws’ effects on the marital relationship,” “couple becomes the fulcrum point: effects of parents on the marital relationship,” “due to living with husband's parents, male dominance in the marital relationship is further potentiated. The effects of family living style on marital relationship”.
The couple’s dilemma within a three generation family. The difficulties that are recognized by both husband and wife are: “married couple living with parents are more prone to conflict than those who live independently ,” “couple loose the autonomy in the family,” “conflicts between wife and mother in law,” “obligations of taking care of parents.” Another part was the dilemmas of marital relationships resulted from differences in perspectives between husband and wife. These included “the dilemma of differences in family relationships, which was the conflict between difficulty to be independent and forced isolation,” “the dilemma of differences in family boundaries, which was the conflict between husband’s responsibilities of filial obedience and devotion and wife’s desires for intimacy,” “the dilemma of imbalance in workloads of house chores, which was the conflict between husband’s financial pressure and wife’s heavy workload of house chores,” “unwilling to change or hard to change: the dilemma of the conflicts between the traditional roles between different sexes,” “live together or not to live together: whether to continue the three generation family dynamic in the future,”
Targeted on the different scenarios mentioned above, I further examined the following adaptive methods of “couples face hardship together,” “wife’s adaptive methods,” “husband’s adaptive methods.” The results show that sex plays a significant role in the individual’s response to different hardship scenarios. Most wives would adjust self attitude toward the situation in order to adapt and solve the problem, as well as employing a gentle and less direct approach when trying to request for changes on husband’s or older generations’ end. On the other hand, the husband’s approach would target on expecting the parents or wife to change. Furthermore, the wives’ approaches are comparatively more affected by the quality of the marriage. When the wife has more support in a marriage and has more level opinion with the husband, her adaptive approaches towards the inter-generation relationship would be more dynamic, and would be more positive when disagreements occur inter-generation or in marriage.
Key words：extended family、marital relationship(s)、intergenerational relationship(s)、thematic analysis
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