The Effects of Acculturation Stress on Depression of Korean Parents-in-law with Foreign Daughters-in-law: Mediating Effect of Multicultural Receptivity and Moderated Mediating Effect of Korean Communication Skills

Abstract

In the flow of globalization, social, economic, and political changes have created uncertainties and risks, while at the same time opened up new opportunities. Marriage migration has become common for various reasons, and with it, new family forms that are different from that of before are being formed. While the formation of global households accelerating like this, different cultures come into contact within a single family, causing acculturation stress in the process of adaptation and thus causing depression. In the past, acculturative stress has mainly focused on studies on those who have moved to a new society, such as immigrants, international students, refugees, and certain ethnic groups of Latino or Asian descent in Korea. There have been many studies mainly targeting married migrant women, but the fact that a family is a unit and stress in one part affects stress in other parts is overlooked. So, this study aims to verify the effects of acculturation stress on depression among parents-in-law, as well as the mediating effects of multicultural receptivity and the moderated mediating effects of Korean communication skills of foreign daughters-in-law on the relation between acculturation stress and depression of parents-in-law. The subjects of this study are Korean parents-in-law with foreign daughters-in-law. From January to March 2022, a survey was administered through family support centers of Korea. 315 collected questionnaires were utilized for the analysis. First, when the acculturation stress of parents-in-law from multicultural families was higher, depression was high. Second, it was verified that increasing multicultural receptivity reduced depression caused by acculturation stress among parents-in-law. Third, Korean communication skills of foreign daughters-in-law were found to have significant moderated mediating effects on the relations of acculturation stress, depression, and multicultural receptivity of parents-in-law from multicultural families. Therefore, this study suggests that in order to reduce depression caused by acculturation stress of parents-in-law, policy support for both parents-in-law and foreign daughters-in-law is necessary. In other words, it is argued that the adaptability of multicultural families will be improved by increasing the multicultural acceptance of parents-in-law and improving the Korean communication ability of foreign daughters-in-law.