Family Dynamics of Child Care in Korea: Strategies to Relieving the Gap Between Mother ’s Actual and Preferred Hours of Care

This study examines the dynamics of family management for child care in Korea by measuring the gap between a mother ’s actual and preferred hours of care. We assumed that there was a significant discrepancy between actual hours and preferred hours spent caring for young children. This gap, a deviation from preferred amount of care hours, may contribute to a mother’s psychological stress or emotional frustrati on, and it is therefore crucial to be able to manage time or financial resources in order to reduce the discrepancy. The study employed data of Korean mothers who are the primary caregivers to their young children (age 0–9) from the 2018 Family Survey for Child Care (n = 484). Preliminary analyses revealed that mothers tended to spend more hours than they would choose to, on child care. The study finds that the working mothers were not very different from non-working mothers in experiencing the gap in care time. We found that the elderly parents’ time and r esources could play a significant role in decreasing it. This study also showed that income-related factors, household income, mother’s income contribution, and mother’s autonomy for income management were the most crucial factors in reducing the gap between actual amount of care time and prefer red amount of care time.
Source: Journal of Population Ageing - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research