The purpose of this study is to qualitatively investigate how career women form their self-identity in relationship to their parents from the viewpoint of life-span development, and to provide practical information helpful for understanding the change of relationship between parents and adult children and forming desirable parents-daughter relationships by developing the substance theory which suits the socio-cultural context of Korea. In this study, 24 unmarried women who have parents and engage in professional jobs were selected for an in-depth interview. From the findings of this study, 67 concepts, 29 subordinate categories and 13 categories were extracted during the process of open-coding; a research model was then constructed according to the paradigm of the grounded theory. It was found that there are three types: the reality-convinced type, the conflict-compromising type and the self-regulated type who "persistently worry about themselves and try to develop". These results verify the process of career women "worrying about themselves and developing constantly" and its structure by forming their self-identities, adjusting the effects of several contextual factors and using mediatory strategies in the developmental process of self-identity.