• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 1986

The present study investigated the current child care practices of professional working mothers in Korea and their needs for substitute child care outside the home. Three hundred twenty-two professional working mothers who have children under 6 years of age in Seoul, Pusan, Taegu, and Taejon were surveyed with the use of a questionnaire. It was found that during their working hours, most of the professional working mothers put their children in the care of either the paternal or the maternal grandmothers. Others put the children in the care of a full-time housekeeper or a part-time housekeeper. While all the mothers had worked out a way to care for their children, almost all of them would use day care if facilities were available. Specifically, 42 per cent prefer child care at their work site, 21 per cent prefer family day care, and only 3 per cent indicated that they would not use any child care facilities. Most of the working mothers think that their employer should manage the day care program. Others prefer social agency or government management. Regarding costs, most prefer that costs should be split 50-50 between the employer and the family. In addition, professional working mothers wanted quality programs with educational components rather than mere custodial care. It was concluded that variety in types of quality child care programs should be available to provide working mothers the options of choosing what they want for their children. The main type of programs suggested by this study is work site based child care for children under 3 years of age. The existing law for the Saemaul Nursery School program should be implemented so as to include programs for children under 3.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.59 no.2
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• pp.199-213
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• 2021

The purpose of the study was to apply latent transition analysis to the work-family balance of working mothers with a child in elementary school by focusing on the effect of antecedents on both work-family balance typology and the transition between typologies. Data from 400 working mothers who participated in the eighth and eleventh waves of the Panel Study on Korean Children were used. The results can be summarized as follows. First, the latent profile analysis of working mothers whose children were in the first grade classified the work-family balance types as 'contradictory' or 'beneficial' and of working mothers whose children were in the fourth grade as 'conflictual', 'contradictory', 'high beneficial', 'low beneficial' or 'beneficial'. Second, working mothers whose work-family balance was 'contradictory' or 'beneficial' when their children were in the first grade mostly had, respectively, a 'low beneficial' or a 'high beneficial' balance when their children were in the fourth grade. Third, the probability of being classified into each type differed according to subjective happiness and marital conflict in the first grade, and marital conflict and social support in the fourth grade. Moreover, marital conflict and social support were significant in the transition between the types of work-family balance. The study showed that the types of work-family balance differed for each time point for individual working mothers. The study also highlighted the importance of parenting-related personal, family and social factors in determining the work-family balance type and transition between types.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2006

This study focused on the lives of working mothers in its examination of the meaning of an employer supported educare center. Ethnographic methods including participant observation, in-depth interview, and the analysis of documents were used for the case study at D educare center where management has been entrusted to K University. Results showed that employer supported educare center had significant meanings in the lives of working mothers. Meanings consisted of stories about relieving time conflicts, adapting themselves to life space, putting confidence in the educare center, and organizing community. Meanings gained from this study suggest that D educare center could be a model for employer supported educare centers focused on the lives of working mothers.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.87-108
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference in Korean 4-year-olds' cognitive development depending on variables concerning ecological system variables, predictive influences among these variables, and different predictive patterns between working mothers and non-working mothers. The subjects consisted of 998 4-year-olds, derived from the Korean Child Panel data of 2012. The results were as follows: First, 4-year-olds' cognitive development was different depending on their sex, education level of mother and father, mothers' working status, quality of home environment, and mothers' involvement in children's life in their institution. Second, mothers' involvement in children's life in their institution, children's sex, quality of home environment, and mothers' working status predicted 4-year-olds' cognitive development. Third, there was a different pattern of predictive influence among variables according to the mothers' working status. The mothers' involvement in their children's lives in their institution and children's sex was proved to be important in both, but that was more significant in working mothers, and the quality of home environment predicted cognitive development only in working mothers. These results were discussed in terms of necessity of the Korean national policy to support young children's cognitive development efficiently, especially for working mothers.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.79-88
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to compare the dietary behavior of middle school and high school students who had working mothers with students whose mothers were not employed. Self-reports on their dietary behavior and one-day dietary records were obtained from 396 middle school students and 364 high school students using anonymous questionnaires. The results were summarized as follows; the students with working mothers were more likely to not to eat properly and their dietary behavior was generally inadequate, showing a greater irregularity for meals, more of a tendency to skip breakfast, less diversity of food intake, and a higher incidence of drinking and smoking. One-day dietary records obtained by 24k recall methods showed less diverse food intake and a higher rate of skipped meals in students with working mothers. Drinking and smoking were more prevalent among middle school students whose mothers were working than among those students with unemployed mothers, but in the case of high school student the difference was not significant. With more and more housewives seeking jobs, more attention needs to be given to the dietary and nutritional intake of their children, especially among middle school students. High school students seem to be less affected than middle school students by their mother's employment.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.419-431
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• 2013

This study examined the childcare use pattern of the working mothers with preschool children and the factors affecting their use of multiple childcare. The 7th wave data of "Korea Welfare Panel Study" were analyzed for this study. The working mothers with preschool children were selected from the data set and a total of 292 working mothers were included in the analysis. More than 70% of the working mothers were using only one kind of childcare, mostly childcare center and kindergarten and 22.5% of the mothers were using more than two of childcare arrangements. Child factors, maternal factors, household factors, and economic factors were included in the hierarchical logistic regression model in the presented order to predict the use of multiple childcare. The results showed that the child's age and maternal education were positively related to the use of multiple childcare, while whether both parents live with the child, number of children within household, and the poverty status were negatively related to the use of it. Based on these results, we can confer that the main motive for multiple childcare use is to provide various experiences for their children.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.71-84
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• 2000

The objective of this research is to investigate the relation between the parenting stress, recognized by the working mothers, and associated variables systematically. For the purpose, I analyzed the demographic of the working mothers and surrounding variables at the levels of microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystems, to relate with respect to the parenting stress problem. The research composes the sample space of working mothers having children less than 6 years old. The data were analyzed by the statistical method based on frequency, percentile, Pearson's correlation, hierachical and multiple regression. The main results of the research can be summarized as follows: According to the independent effects of diverse ecological systematic variables, there are shown that 11 independent variables can describe about 55.6% of the parenting stress of the working mothers. Among these variables, 'satisfaction about the child care' is the most significant factor, which covers about 34.5%. Additionally, the next significances are observed from such variables as 'temperament of children' (8.2%), 'satisfaction of marriage' (5.1%), 'support of spouse' (1.5%), 'level of education' (1.9%) and so on. In conclusion, it is strongly recommended to compensate and restructure the child care systems more systematically, to afford more reliable parenting environment to the dual earner mothers and fathers and children simultaneously.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.714-728
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• 2016

This research aims to categorize factors affecting reluctance of second childbirth among working mothers using Q methodology. P sample holds 50 working mothers between 20 and 45 years old living in Daegu-Gyeongbuk area. After securing the total 72 statements, the final 24 Q samples were confirmed through the second classification. As a result of this study, three types of the working mothers were classified. The first type that 22 working mothers (44%) were classified was "having uncooperative spouse". The second type which 13 working mothers (26%) were included was "working at not family-friendly workplace". Lastly, eight working mothers (16%) belonged to the third type, "having financial difficulty". Therefore, this study could confirm that the working mothers evade their second childbirth mostly because of the insufficient childcare support both at home and at work, rather than economic reasons. Thus, this study suggests that the Korean government should try to spread work-family balance culture than just providing financial support in order to encourage the second childbirth among working mothers.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.48 no.9
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• pp.79-87
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether employed mothers' extended working hours have effects on childcare style and work-family conflicts. The data came from the 2007 Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Family(KLoWF) of the Korean Women's Development Institute. 475 females with preschoolers or elementary-school children were used in this study. The major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) Weekly average working hours varied by education, salary, and the presence of preschoolers. (2) The time of childcare was significantly shorter in mothers who work more than 50 hours/week (3) Mothers who worked more than 50 hours/week felt significantly high work-family conflict. These analyses pointed to the importance of obeying the law related to working hours as the most important thing to sustain work-family balance. Institutional foundations should be enabled to keep legal working hours.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.41-62
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• 2018

Objective: This study employed a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of the Respected Parents & Respected Children(RPRC) parent education program developed for working mothers of dual-income families with young children. Methods: A total of 32 working mothers were randomly assigned to two groups, an intervention group (n = 16) and a control group (n = 16). Mothers in the intervention group participated in the parent education program. After the termination of the program, differences between the pretest and posttest in terms of mothers'parenting behaviors, parenting efficacy and parental role satisfaction were compared in both groups. Results: Mothers in the intervention group were significantly improved in their parenting behaviors and parenting efficacy, whereas mothers in the control group did not show any significant differences between pretest and posttest scores. However, there was no significant difference in parental role satisfaction between the intervention group and the control group. Conclusion/Implications: These findings suggest that RPRC parent education program is effective in bringing about positive changes in working mothers'parenting confidence, which can be crucial for the future developmental outcomes of their children.