• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.121-133
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychological wellbeing as applied to the bioecological family life welfare model, concerning individual attributes, family backgrounds, and family processes across the family life cycles. Based on Bronfenbrenner's bioecological perspective, the "bioecological family welfare model", which includes person (individual attributes), context (family background), process (mechanism - family process), and time (the family life cycles), was applied as a research paradigm for this study. The sample for the questionnaire study comprised for 900 families, considering the family life cycle in Busan and the Kyungnam area. The families were categorized into 6 family life cycles based on Duvall and Hill's family life cycle. For the final analysis, 628 families were used. According to the path analysis results, the length of commitment before marriage and self-esteem had significant effects on the stress coping ability. Several individual attributes and family backgrounds such as age, length of marriage, family life cycle, self-esteem and stress coping ability had significant effects on marital adjustment. The family life cycle and age were significant variables on family function. The significant variables on psychological wellbeing were monthly income, length of commitment before marriage, stress coping ability and marital adjustment. The regression model showed that the variables of the individual attributes, context and family process accounted for 51% of the psychological wellbeing. The results show that the suggested research model was significant and effective to explain the mechanism of psychological wellbeing. Individual attributes and family context have an impact on stress coping, marital adjustment, and family function, which in turn affect psychological wellbeing.