• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.197-208
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to examine the intergenerational transmission of mother-daughter attachment across three generations, and to determine whether the mother-daughter attachment of three generations influences the adult daughter's ego-resilience. The subjects of this study were 310 unmarried adult women aged 20${\sim}$29, residing in the Busan area, and their 310 middle-aged mothers. The mothers responded to two sets of questionnaire investigating their attachment to their mothers (G1-G2) in the past and the present attachment to their adult daughters (G2-G3). Meanwhile, the adult daughters were given questionnaires regarding their attachment to their mothers and their ego-resiliency. The measurements used for this study were the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) and the Ego-Resiliency Scale (ER). Among the distributed questionnaires, 265 sets were collected and 252 sets were actually analyzed using SPSS 12.0 after 13 sets had been excluded due to incomplete data. Basic statistics were used such as frequency analysis, Pearson's correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. The study results were as follows. First, the adult daughter-mother (G2-G3) attachment was explained mostly by mother-grandmother (G1-G2) attachment, daughter's age, and economic status of the family. The strongest factor was the mother-grandmother attachment which implies the transmission of attachment through generations. Second, among the factors that influenced the ego-resilience of an unmarried adult daughter, attachment to one's mother perceived by the daughter turned out to be the most significant. Especially, the more positive the adult daughter's emotion toward her mother and the higher the daughter's education, the stronger the ego-resilience of the adult single daughter was. It was concluded that the mother-daughter attachment remained consistent throughout three generations, which influenced the social-psychological adjustment of the adult unmarried daughter.