2013/09/01 by Miai Sung, Jaerim Lee
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Brother #Context (archaeology) #Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences #Developmental psychology #Gender studies #Geography #Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving #Law #Marriage law #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Normative #Political science #Psychology #Qualitative research #Sibling #Sibling relationship #Sister #Social psychology #Social science #Sociology #Thematic analysis
paper · doi:10.3138/jcfs.44.5.571
crossref issued 2013/09/01 · crossref published 2013/09/01 · crossref published-print 2013/09/01 · openalex publication_date 2013/09/01 · crossref created 2019/02/01 · crossref deposited 2025/03/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of adult sibling and sibling-in-law relationships in South Korea. Given that Confucian and egalitarian norms have coexisted and often collided in families in contemporary Korea, this study sets out to examine how Confucian norms with regards to age and gender have remained the same or changed in the context of Korean adult sibling and sibling-in-law relationships. In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 middle-aged Koreans (nine men and eight women) who were married and had at least one sibling and one sibling-in-law. A thematic analysis revealed that brothers and their wives experienced relational difficulties because of conflicts in Confucian versus egalitarian expectations on the eldest couple’s roles or due to the unmet roles on their normative expectations. Thanks to the contemporary versions of Confucian gender norms, sisters reported that they had close relationships and frequent interactions without concerns about instrumental responsibilities within their families-of-origin. Brother-sister relationships typically remained distant after marriage because of Confucian gender norms that differentiated brothers as insiders and married sisters as outsiders from their families-of-origin. These findings suggest that the co-existence of Confucian and egalitarian family norms plays an important role in shaping the dynamics of adult sibling and sibling-in-law relationships in contemporary Korea.