Family Life Experience and Life Satisfaction of Multicultural Families with School-Aged Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the general characteristics and the variety of family life experiences related to the life satisfaction of multicultural families with school-aged children. Data were drawn from the first wave of the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey conducted in 2010 and developed by the National Youth Policy Institute. Further, the sample for this study consisted of 95 multicultural families who met the requirements. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, the t-test, analysis of variance, and multiple regression using SPSS ver. 18.0. The main results showed that family life experiences that were made up of 5 domains, specifically time, leisure, household economy, health, and child education had a broad range of levels. In addition, family life experiences differed according to the general characteristics of multicultural families with school-aged children, such as mother’s employment status, number of children, father’s employment status and education level, and family composition. Lastly, their life satisfaction was significantly predicted by the father’s employment status and health, children’s age, children’s education, and leisure in the order of significance. These findings suggested the need to expand the social intervention range for multicultural families with school-aged children, particularly in terms of family leisure and children’s school life adaptation. Keywords: multicultural families with school-aged children, family life experience, life satisfaction