The View of Home Economics Teachers on Parents-in-Law

여교사의 시부모관

The increase of female employees tends to change the traditional division of the roles of members in the family, and as a result it changes the idea of family relation and the extent of how housewives with job feel happy toward their marriage. Therefore, it may be very significant to study what attitude woman job holders as housewives have toward their family, especially parents-in-law. In this paper the writer has sampled as an exemplary group woman teachers who teach home economics in high schools in Seoul, and investigated what opinion they have toward the problem of living together under the same roof with their parents-in-laws and otherwise of financing them in an older age. This analysis is based upon 130 questionnaires collected as proper data out of 138. The conclusion made from the analysis is as follows : (1) as regards the living together under the same roof if necessary in the future, one-fifth of the group approves in affirmative terms ; (2) but when parents-in-law become older, about half of the teachers wish to live with them in the same home and except the indefinite few, one-third of them taken the negative position ; (3) finally, the great majority (84%) regard as their duty the financial support in any case when parents-in-law become older, and only five per cent answer in negative. This analysis leads to the further conclusion that the idea of family relations cherished by high school teachers of home economics is not yet far off the traditional relationship with the intention of gradual improvement, but on the other it still sticks to the traditional line without too much impairing it.