Multicultural Families in Korea: Focusing on the Parenting and the Children’s Development

Along with a rapid growth of inbound immigration of Korea since 1990s, the well-being of multicultural families and children in Korea has also received much attention. In this talk, Dr. Young Eun Chang examines the characteristics of multicultural children and youth using longitudinal data from the Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study, which have been conducted annually from 2011 to 2019 by National Youth Policy Institute. In addition to the children and youth from multicultural families, Dr. Chang also examines the parenting self-efficacy in multicultural families with adolescents. Results of her research clearly indicate the critical roles of the foreign-born parents’ acculturation stress in their parenting self-efficacy, which in turn influences the children’s development. Dr. Chang discusses implications of the findings towards quality of life of married couples and the children in Korea.

Dr. Young Eun Chang is a professor in the School of Social Welfare at Chung-Ang University in Korea, and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in PSU's Department of Sociology (2024-2025). She studied Consumer Sciences and Child Studies (B.A.) and Child Development and Family Sciences (M.A.) at Seoul National University in Korea and earned a Ph.D. in Human Development at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. Her research interest lies in: 1) Parenting and children's development in diverse contexts; 2) Work-family balance and parents' well-being in Korea; and 3) Child care and children's development. Much of her work has been published in a number of journals over the years. Currently, she is working on several projects, looking at parenting of multicultural families in Korea.