중년기 취업 여성의 이중돌봄 경험 = The double caregiving experience of middle-aged employed women

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study aimed to understand the structure and meaning of the dual caregiving experiences of middle-aged women who balance work, child rearing, and care of elderly parents. The research questions addressed in this study are as follows: “What experiences do employed middle-aged women undergo in dual caregiving, and what is the meaning of these experiences?” The descriptive phenomenological qualitative research method proposed by Giorgi(2017) was used to understand the essence of dual caregiving as experienced by employed middle-aged women.
Middle-aged women aged 40～54, who have been employed for at least three years while simultaneously taking care of minor children and elderly parents and coping with daily life activities, were the participants in the study. Eight participants were selected through purposive sampling, and data were collected from an average of three or more in-depth interviews conducted from February to August 2025. From the interview data, analysis of their dual caregiving experiences, employing the descriptive phenomenological qualitative research method, led to the extraction of 410 meaning units, 19 emergent themes, and 5 essential themes. The essential themes were as follows: “everyday life endlessly worn down by the demands of children, parents, and the workplace,” “burdensome endurance sustained by duty and affection,” “the quagmire of entangled work and caregiving,” “institutional gaps that return as the burden of caregiving,” and “attending to oneself while gradually easing the burden of concentrated caregiving.” The central theme turned out to be “a weary journey of sustaining one’s place despite the weight of concentrated caregiving and work.”
First, “everyday life endlessly worn down by the demands of children, parents, and the workplace” refers to the difficulties and exhaustion of employed middle-aged women’s dual caregiving, indicating their emotional burnout and financial burdens intensified by the constant dispersion of their time and energy and plagued by physical fatigue. This reflects the everyday repetitive routine nature of their tasks in the process of dual caregiving. This places them in a life structure that cannot be accommodated within the constraints of a 24-hour day. Individual efforts alone do not suffice. They need institutional support and social intervention to ease their burden.
Second, the “burdensome endurance sustained by duty and affection” reflects conflicting priorities, role conflicts, and ambivalent emotions that emerge when simultaneously caring for elderly parents and children, both at different life stages, revealing the multilayered, multiplex, and relational aspects of dual caregiving. These middle-aged women constantly adjust and negotiate their roles and relationships within the overlapping structures of care for their children and elderly parents owing to limited resources and time. In the course of caregiving for two generations simultaneously, oftentimes, women become unable to provide care for their children because of the urgency of caring for elderly parents. This could be revealing the reality of insufficient child care thereby compromising on the quality or sufficiency of child care. Please consider. It was observed that, even in this burdensome reality, the responsibility of dual caregiving was mostly on women, causing them to feel unjustly burdened and resentful.
Third, “the quagmire of entangled work and caregiving” reflects the duality of caregiving and labor, when employed women’s continuity of caregiving is also significantly affected by key factors of workplace conditions, such as the personnel system and organizational culture. Participants restored economic autonomy and affirmed the meaning and value of their own existence through work even in situations where their agency and autonomy were limited by caregiving.
Fourth, “institutional gaps that return as the burden of caregiving” refers to how caregiving responsibilities are reverted to individuals owing to deficiencies in public caregiving support systems. Insufficient systems of child care and elder care compel employed middle-aged women to endure dual caregiving as an assumed responsibility. Further, existing family care programs are often not accessible due to workplace conditions. Therefore, expanding public caregiving systems and the socialization of care are essential foundations for sustainable labor and caregiving.
Fifth, “attending to oneself while gradually easing the burden of concentrated caregiving” is about recognizing the disproportionate distribution of caregiving and readjusting caregiving roles. Employed middle-aged women engaged in the arduous process of caregiving realized that caregiving should not a responsibility to be borne by women alone but is a task that must be shared among all family members. Subsequently, they revealed efforts to redistribute caregiving roles to their husband and siblings and devote time for themselves. This confirmed the need to alleviate the burden of dual caregiving by establishing social systems that ensure sharing the weight of care and work that is usually borne by women.
The central theme of “a weary journey of sustaining one’s place despite the weight of intensive caregiving and work” refers to the burden on women who provide care for their children and elderly parents while maintaining their employment at the workplace. This results in a multilayered process of facing physical, psychological, and temporal challenges, conflicting priorities, and the strain of performing multiple roles. Institutional deficiencies and societal settings lead to middle-aged employed women bearing the weight of caregiving while the husband or siblings are not constrained by it. However, these women were navigating a weary journey of sustaining their place in order to care for their children and elderly parents.
This study is significant in that it examined how employed middle-aged women’s dual caregiving is experienced within the context of institutional and social relationships beyond individual burden, and it provided foundational data for deeper insights into the essential meaning of dual caregiving. Furthermore, the study revealed that the coexistence of work and caregiving for employed middle-aged women is a structural issue that cannot be resolved by individual effort alone, thus proposing the need for integrated policies considering the caregiving role of middle-aged women for both children and elderly parents receiving care. This establishes the need for adopting care-friendly policies and environments at the societal level that help balance work and caregiving by distributing the caregiving burden, which is now concentrated on women.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 제1장 서론 1
• 제1절 연구의 필요성 1
• 제2절 연구의 목적 및 연구질문 8
• 제2장 문헌 고찰 9
• 제1절 이중돌봄의 이해 9
• 1. 이중돌봄의 개념 및 특성 9
• 2. 가족구조의 변화와 이중돌봄 문제 18
• 3. 이중돌봄 관련 선행연구 20
• 제2절 중년기 여성의 일과 돌봄 26
• 1. 중년기 여성과 이중돌봄 현황 26
• 2. 중년기 여성의 이중돌봄과 일 30
• 제3장 연구방법 34
• 제1절 Giorgi(2017)의 현상학적 질적 연구 34
• 제2절 연구참여자 선정 37
• 제3절 자료수집 40
• 제4절 자료분석 42
• 제5절 연구의 엄격성과 윤리적 고려 45
• 1. 연구의 엄격성 45
• 2. 윤리적 고려 46
• 제6절 연구자의 준비 및 선이해 점검 48
• 1. 연구자의 준비 48
• 2. 연구자의 선이해 점검 50
• 제4장 연구결과 51
• 제1절 중년기 취업 여성의 이중돌봄 경험의 개별 상황 51
• 제2절 중년기 취업 여성의 이중돌봄 경험의 현상학적 주제 64
• 1. 자녀와 부모, 직장의 요구 속에 끝없이 뭉개지는 일상 66
• 2. 의무와 애정으로 이어가는 버거운 버팀 78
• 3. 뒤엉킨 일과 돌봄의 늪 98
• 4. 돌봄의 짐으로 돌아오는 제도의 빈틈 108
• 5. 쏠린 돌봄을 조금씩 내려놓고 챙기는 나 118
• 제3절 중년기 취업 여성의 이중돌봄 경험의 통합적 재구성 132
• 제5장 논의 및 제언 136
• 제1절 논의 136
• 제2절 제언 146
• 1. 실천적 제언 146
• 2. 정책적 제언 150
• 제3절 연구의 의의 및 한계 155
• 1. 연구의 의의 155
• 2. 연구의 한계 156
• 참고문헌 158
• 부록
• 부록 1. 연구 설명문 172
• 부록 2. 연구참여 동의서 173
• 부록 3. 면담 질문지 174
• 표 목차
• 표 1. 연구참여자 기본 정보 39
• 표 2. 연구질문 41
• 표 3. 연구참여자의 이중돌봄 상황 52
• 표 4. 중년기 취업 여성의 이중돌봄 경험의 현상학적 주제 65