| Summary: | 碩士 === 長榮大學 === 社會工作學系碩士班 === 104 === The aim of this study is to probe into women’s self-recognition and changes in relationships through the marriage experiences of Vietnamese immigrant women in Taiwan. Purposive sampling is used as the sampling method with eight immigrant women in Tainan and Kaohsiung as the research participants who have more than ten years of cross-cultural marriage experiences and are still married. The researcher used in-depth interview to collect data for further analysis and interpretation. From the view of self-in-relation, the researcher studied the relationships and self-recognition of the new immigrant women in their family of origin, their motives, challenges, and breakthroughs of entering cross-cultural marriages, and the self-development process
in their current marriages.
The research findings reveal:
(一)The self-concept of the immigrant women were immature in their origin family; their self-understanding and self-evaluation are mostly based on significant others. Their self also grew in these relation contexts, resulting in developing two main categories of self: positive relations with self and distant relations with self.
(二)The process of the transformation of self in marriages are classified as three main points:
(1)From subordination to independence: Women rely on their significant others at the beginning and develop to gain autonomy.
(2)From patriarchy to equal rights: Women are pressured upon by patriarchal cultures in the primary stage; now they are able to share the power within the family, allowing gender role division to develop toward equal rights.
(3)From horizontal to vertical: Women has transformed from valuing a horizontal spouse relationship in the initial stage to emphasizing a vertical parent-child relationship nowadays. The main role of self is “motherhood” instead of “spouse” as before. However, the shift to vertical relation is not mentioned in Gilligan’s “Self-in-Relation” theory; the researcher believes the relation is related to the Chinese social culture. Influenced by Confucianism, women tend to focus on their parent-child relationship in marriages.
Based on the research findings, the researcher suggested ideas for the betterment of social work profession and also direction for future research.
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