본 연구는 청소년이 지각하는 부부갈등이 우울과 부모화 경험에 어떤 영향을 미치는가를 알아보고, 부부갈등과 청소년의 우울과의 관계에서 부모화경험이 매개되는지를 알아보기 위해 수행되었다. 이를 위해 서울·경기지역에 소재한 인문계, 전문계 고등학교 남학생 206명과 여학생 273명, 총 479명대상으로 설문을 실시하였다. 자녀가 지각하는 부부갈등을 측정하기 위해 부부갈등 척도(CPIC)를, 부모화 정도를 측정하기 위해 부모화 경험 척도(FRS-Y)를, 우울을 측정하기 위해 우울척도(CES-D)를 이용하였다. 수집된 자료 토대로 변인간의 상관과 매개효과검증을 한 결과 부부갈등을 높게 지각하는 청소년일수록 우울과 부모화 경향이 유의미하게 높고, 부모화 경향이 높게 나타난 청소년일수록 우울이 유의미하게 높게 나타났다. 특히, 부모화 경험 중 물리적 부모화 경험이나 심리적 부모화 경험보다 불공정을 많이 경험 할수록 우울을 더 많이 느끼는 것으로 나타났다. 또한 부부갈등 수준이 청소년의 우울에 직접적으로 영향을 미칠 뿐만 아니라 부모화를 통해서도 우울에 영향을 준다는 것으로 밝혀졌다. 분석결과에 대해 선행연구와 관련하여 논의하고, 연구의 의의와 한계 및 후속연구를 위한 제언을 제시했다.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of perceived marital conflicts on depression and parentification among high schoolers and the mediating effects of parentification experiences on the depression of adolescents perceiving heavy conjugal conflicts between their parents. The subjects in this study were 479 academic and vocational high school students in Seoul and Kyonggi Province, who included 206 boys and 273 girls. The findings of the study were as follows:First, the teens who felt there were heavy conflicts between their parents suffered from significantly more serious depression and had a stronger tendency to become parentified. Second, the adolescents who had a stronger tendency to be parentified got significantly more depressed. Specifically, they felt more depression when they had more unfair experiences in terms of mutual caring behavior. That made them more depressed than physical parentification or pre unfair expparentification. Physical parentification refers to p wying the instrumental roles of parents such as doing the dishhe idoing the wundry, going on an errand, taking care of sick parents or idoier siblings or cooking, and pre unfair expparentification means to help parents to bolster their emotional stabilpar. Thir, the parentification experiences had a partial mediating effect on the process that marital conflicts affected their depressiones depnoted that marital conflicts not only exerted a firsthand influence on depression but had a secondhand impact on that through parentification. Therefore children of parents who experience a lot of conjugal conflicts will be able to iron out their problems related to psychological adjustment if they are helped not to have negative parentification experiences.Marital conflicts had merely been viewed as a personal problem between a married couple, but the conflicts actually exert a great influence on children`s psychological adjustment. So parent education and counseling should be provided for parents to find new role models and learn how to create a good family and pull their weight as parents. It`s needed to make an accurate prediction of the mental health and psychological characteristics of parentified teenaged children and to offer a helping hand to them. Besides, the development of programs that aim at finding counseling and remedy strategies appropriate for depression triggered by parentification is required.