The purpose of this paper is to study the companionship of couples in the urban family in korea. In traditional family system, the companionship of couple was taken for granted and the emphasis placed elsewhere. The change of family system into nuclea...
The purpose of this paper is to study the companionship of couples in the urban family in korea. In traditional family system, the companionship of couple was taken for granted and the emphasis placed elsewhere. The change of family system into nuclear one has brought with it the change of nature of companionship in family unit. It is of primary importance todays.
As the korean family system has also begun to undergo a change to a nuclear family system, it can be guessed that great emphasis will be placed upon the companionship of couple in family life. In order to find out the reality of companionship of couple in the urban family in korea, I classified companionship into three type, i,e., organizational, friendship and informative. R. Blood and D. Wolfe classified companionship into these patterns.
And another categoty named general companionship was added to them.
The results of this research can be summarized as follows.
1. Organizational companionship involves joint husband-wife participation in formally organized group of various kinds. 30.7% of respondents answered they belong to one group, 4.7% belong to two group and 35.6% are non-participants.
2. Informative companionship deal with communication to each other about things which happen while they are apart. In this research, respondents were asked, "How often does husband tell his wife things which happened outside home?" 10% of all respondents never tell his wife about things concerning his jobs. 58.8% said they tell occasionally. The percentages of those who said they tell once a week and once a month were the same. They were 5.9% respectively. Those who communicate with their wives daily were 18.3%.
3. Friendship companionship consists in sharing friendships. The question involved is "About how many of your husband's friend or wife's friend are men or women that you personally know?" 31% of all respondents answered they know most friends. 54.3% said they know some friends and 8.6% said they know no friend. Respondents were asked about frequency of shopping that husband and wife do together. And they were given the question, "How many times do they go out together for recreation and some othen purpose in a month or in a week?" 8.8% said they never go out together. Only 10.9% answered they go out together frequeatly and 53.14% said they go out occasionally. 43.1% said they never do shopping together and 28.8% said they rarely do together. Only 2.4% said they do shopping together frequently and 24.8% of all respondents said they do occasionally.