INTRODUCTION
Health promotion behaviors refer to habits or actions that maintain and promote health. The positive effects of seven health promotion behaviors called the ‘Alameda 7’—7 to 8 hours of sleep a day, having breakfast, no snacks, maintaining an appropriate weight, regular exercise, no alcohol, and no smoking—have been reported in disease prevention and health protection studies [
1]. In addition, family forms a fundamental backdrop of health protection and has a major influence on individual health. Therefore, it is essential to consider family function in assessing individual health habits.
Openness and globalization in the 21st century have stimulated migration, which has resulted in changes in the family domain. In Korea, international migration has interacted with social phenomena to bring major changes to the traditional family structure and perspectives on marriage. In particular, there has been a rise in international marriages between Korean men and immigrant women, resulting in a new family structure known as ‘multicultural families.’
Previous studies have shown that living together, adapting to marriage, and building intimacy with each other have a significant impact on the health of married couples [
2]. In particular, the support of a spouse is more influential in the life of a couple in a multicultural family than in a Korean family [
3].
The purpose of this study was to investigate the marital adjustment and affinity of married couples in a special environment, such as multicultural families formed by Korean men and migrant women, and identify the health behaviors associated with them.
DISCUSSION
In Korea, international marriages between Korean men and foreign women have been on the rise since the mid-1990s, mainly through marriage brokers. According to the Korean Ministry of Justice, there were 125,137 female immigrants eligible for marriage in Korea at the end of June 2015. This number was reduced from 128,749 in the same period in 2014 owing to the strengthened visa requirements for marriage immigrants imposed by the government in April 2014 [
14]. However, the frequency of international marriages is expected to increase in the future. This study investigated the marital adjustment and intimacy of multicultural families formed by the marriages of Korean men with female immigrants and analyzed their subsequent health behaviors.
Preceding studies have reported a lower level of functioning in multicultural families compared with that of traditional Korean families [
15]. Multicultural families are currently rising in prevalence in Korea, so the country’s medical community should study this subject. The issues and health of multicultural spouses have not yet been studied sufficiently, even if they are at the forefront of change owing to their exposure to the fusion of family structures. Their marital adjustment and intimacy are major factors that will directly impact how their families function. Therefore, it is important to measure the degree of spousal support in multicultural families and the subsequent extent of their health behaviors to promote their functioning and health promotion behaviors.
This study investigated marital adjustment and marital intimacy in multicultural families formed by marriages between Korean men and female immigrants and the extent of their subsequent health behaviors to evaluate the couples’ health status.
Compared with Korean husbands in multicultural families, immigrant wives scored approximately 10 points lower for marital adjustment and marital intimacy, probably due to their struggles with the language barrier, economic hardships, loneliness, cultural differences, childrearing requirements, education, and so on. Each local government has tried to assist their adjustment in Korea by establishing a support center under the leadership of the central government to provide them with various welfare programs and lessons in the Korean language, cooking, history, and more, but a large number of female immigrants still reportedly experience difficulties [
16]. Several studies have suggested that female immigrants struggle to adapt to Korean society owing to their Korean husbands’ inappropriate ideas regarding marriage and lack of understanding of or disdain toward their wife’s home country [
17-
19]. Therefore, it is important to offer diverse programs on marriage preparation and to educate couples through immigrant marriage support centers before or after submitting applications for international marriages. Offering more information on immigrant wives’ home countries and cultures will be a major source of support for the settlement of immigrant women, as this can increase the couples’ mutual respect for and acceptance and understanding of their spouse’s culture, leading to higher marital satisfaction.
The female immigrant group with high marital adjustment practiced appropriate health behaviors in the categories of physical activity and normal weight maintenance. The Korean husband group with the highest marital adjustment and marital intimacy had appropriate health habits in terms of smoking, physical activity, and normal weight maintenance. According to previous studies, the family is a dynamic and interdependent unit that affects physical, emotional, and social development and a primary social environment that affects health and health behaviors [
20]. Therefore, the extent of marital support needs to be established as grounds for the improvement of family function and appropriate health behavior.
The female immigrant group with low marital adjustment was found to have a higher odds ratio of exposure to abnormal weight than the group with higher marital adjustment. Female marriage immigrants are likely to undergo many changes in their health due to various difficulties in adapting to and living in Korean society. The results of this study are similar to those of previous studies, in which married immigrant women were exposed to nutritional deficiencies or nutritional overload due to differing food cultures and eating habits and thus did not maintain proper weight [
21]. Taking account of the report linking a healthy diet with seasonal food and the higher subjective health status of female immigrants who have adjusted well to Korea [
22], it can be concluded that female immigrants will likely have a healthy diet if they have positive support from their Korean spouses and do not experience much difficulty when settling in Korea.
This study also observed that both groups (Korean husbands and female immigrants) with lower marital adjustment were more likely to have a lack of physical activity, probably due to inadequate family function or a lack of family leisure time. Family leisure can be defined as spare time that parents and children spend together for recreation to maintain their physical and psychological health and develop various skills [
23]. According to the ‘family status report’ by the Korean Ministry of Gender Equality & Family, the most frequently quoted reasons for difficulty in spending spare time with family were ‘financial burden (29.2%),’ ‘being busy with work (22.4%),’ and ‘conflicting schedules of family members (16.9%),’ in descending order [
24]. These limitations can be overcome by actively utilizing communal sports spaces, including the sports training centers, sport parks, complex sport facilities for agricultural and fishing communities, sport facilities for villages, and youth centers that have been established since the late 1990s to expand sport spaces for citizens and welfare infrastructure. The active use of such facilities may enhance family functioning and health promotion in multicultural families.
In the group of Korean husbands with low marital adjustment, the likelihood of smoking was higher than in the group with high marital adjustment. As an inclusive concept that encompasses spousal consensus, satisfaction with the relationship, participation in activities, affectionate expression, and so on, marital adjustment measures the extent of spousal support. Therefore, the relationship identified in this study between husbands’ marital adjustment and smoking can be seen in the same context as the previous findings that emphasized the importance of spousal support in quitting smoking [
25]. Planning for spousal support is suggested during smoker assessment in medical situations to ensure the efficacy of anti-smoking strategies.
No clear relationship was found between marital adjustment, marital intimacy, and at-risk drinking and smoking in the female immigrant group, and no statistically significant relationship was found with at-risk drinking in the Korean husband group. In a survey of alcoholics and research on the rehabilitative model by the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2008 [
26], the risk factors of smoking and drinking for Korean adults were identified as follows: (1) men, (2) divorce/separation, death of a spouse, or being unmarried, and (3) having less than 12 years of education. As this study was conducted on (1) married couples living in one family and (2) who had mostly completed higher education, it excluded the risk factors for smoking and drinking. Therefore, no clear findings were drawn from this study, as most participants belonged to the low-risk group for smoking and drinking in the analysis of health behavior.
No significant relationship was confirmed between marital intimacy and the health behavior of immigrant wives and Korean husbands in this study. As an indicator of mutual closeness and sharing, marital intimacy encompasses affection, sex, dedication, and cognitive elements. In other words, it is a concept that represents the emotional relationship between spouses. According to previous studies, marital intimacy holds greater interpretative value for middle-aged couples who have spent most of their lives together, as it refers to the aspects of mutual emotional, cognitive and physical closeness, and dedication more than marital adjustment [
27]. The mean±SD age of immigrant wives was as low as 26.4±4.4, which explains their incomplete establishment of an emotional marital relationship. Thus, it was difficult to identify the interpretative value of marital intimacy.
Through this study, a relationship was found between high marital adjustment in multicultural families, healthy physical activity, and proper weight maintenance. In addition, it was found that smoking and marriage adjustment were related in the Korean husband group from multicultural families. Based on these results, it can be seen that when planning the health promotion of multicultural families, we should consider not only their biomedical health but also their psychosocial health, including marital well-being. This comprehensive approach to multicultural families can ultimately contribute to improving their quality of life.
This study has several limitations. It did not represent multicultural families across the whole country, only focusing on subjects residing in Daejeon city and Chungcheongnam-do province. We did not know the change in health behaviors of immigrant women and Korean men before and after marriage. Therefore, the causality between health behavior and the degree of marital adjustment or marital intimacy is not clear. Furthermore, it is more objective for Korean husbands to assess the communication skills of their migrant wives than for migrant women to assess their own communication skills.
Despite these limitations, considering the present lack of research on multicultural families and couples in particular, this study can be utilized as a baseline to increase the appropriate health behaviors of married female immigrants and their families and improve their quality of life.