• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.24 no.1 s.79
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• pp.141-158
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes of lives and problems of 'Kirogi'(or Wild Goose) fathers, who were called fathers in the 'Kirogi' families, South Korean families separated by an ocean. They almost sent too much money that were $50-100\%$ of their family income to the families abroad, and got economic pressures so severely. More or less, they sold their own real estates, moved to much smaller sized house. and often expended the saving money. Also, they had difficulties of taking care of their children and felt lonely very much. By the hand, they might experience the adaptation process through 3 stages-troubles, acception(or wandering or enjoy), adjust (or violation). They had three types of problems, that is, family relationship problem(the isolation), psychological problem(loneliness and self-control), economic problem (financial pressure and drop of economic status). They found the strategies to overcome these problems for themselves. Firstly, they took lots of methods like email, internet chatting, phone, etc. to communicate with their family everyday and made many events to strengthen the ties among families. Secondly, they got rid of stresses mainly by joining with their colleagues at work. Finally, they decided to lower the standard of living of their family in foreign country or tried to find their wives' jobs to prevent the financial hardship.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.620-630
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• 2010

Purpose: This study was conducted to compare the level of depression, self-esteem and mother-adolescent (M-A) communication perceived by both mothers and adolescents between the early adolescent (E-A) group and the late adolescent (L-A) group; and to examine the actor effect and the partner effect of self-esteem and M-A communication on depression in mothers and adolescents. Methods: Participants were 107 Kirogi families who resided in the Midwest region of the U. S. Data were collected from September, 2008 to March, 2009 using the scales of Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D), Self-esteem and Parent-Adolescent Communication Inventory. Results: Mothers in E-A group reported higher scores on depression than mothers in L-A group. Adolescents in L-A group reported higher scores on depression and lower scores on self-esteem than adolescents in E-A group. In the E-A group, mothers' selfesteem had big actor effect on mothers' depression and partner effect on adolescents' depression. In the L-A group, selfesteem of mothers and adolescents had actor effect on their depression respectively without partner effect. M-A communication of mothers influences mothers' depression negatively and adolescents' depression positively. In both group, M-A communication influences their depression with mediating effect of self-esteem. Conclusion: To promote Kirogi families' mental health, programs for mothers and adolescents should be developed differently according to adolescents' development stage.