2006 Volume 20 Issue 2 Pages 85-97
The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationship among marital quality, personality development by “becoming a parent”，and psychological / subjective well-being. In addition, the influences of occupational and educational factors on them were examined. A total of 669 mothers, who make their children attend to one of the five public kindergartens (n=390) or seven public nurseries (n=279) in two towns, participated in this research. They completed four questionnaires as follows. (1)psychological and subjective well-being，(2)personality development by “becoming a parent”, (3)marital quality, and (4)demographical data.
The main findings were as follows. First, the type of mother's occupation and their educational level influenced the development of becoming a parent and their psychological well-being. Second, the following hypotheses were verified using covariance structural analysis. Communication time directly affects marital quality. Marital quality directly affects psychological (or subjective) well-being and indirectly affects them by being mediated with the development of “becoming a parent”. The data were found to fit well with the model which we presupposed with a degree of relatively high adaptability. Also, it was found that the length of communication time did not influence the personality development by “becoming a parent” or psychological / subjective well-being even if communication time is long enough, in case mothers could not recognize that their marital quality is good. These results were more systematic when it had analyzed only data of full-time housewives compared to these of wives who had full-time occupations.
