Nowadays working women are not limited to single women, and the number of married women with careers is rapidly increasing. With 48.9% of married women participating in the economy, childcare has become a new social issue and a study on this issue h...
Nowadays working women are not limited to single women, and the number of married women with careers is rapidly increasing. With 48.9% of married women participating in the economy, childcare has become a new social issue and a study on this issue has become necessary. In response, the expansion of infant care facilities for welfare that accommodate the needs of working mothers is needed. This study aims to find a way to support and encourage working mothers by analizing what working mothers need from infant care facilities.
This study performed analysis of documentary records and research simultaneously to look into the request level of voting mothers for use of infant care facilities. Documentary records such as existing papers and journals, texts were analized, and infant homes or childcare facilities specializing in infant care located in Soosung-gu and Dalseo-gu in Daegu, Gyungsan, and Gumi were selected for the research. 200 working mothers using the facilities were surveyed and the data collected were compiled into statistics using the following methods. First, the frequency and percentage were calculated to know the working mother's perception of the relationship between work and family, their request for infant care, and ways to improve the infant care service in the working mother's view. Second, ANOVA was performed with the independent variable being the population (age, academic background, and career-wise) of working mothers, and inquiries on the environment, education, facility, and management as the dependent variable, to see if there is any difference in the perception of the childcare facilities environment-, education-, facility-, and management-wise according to the various population of working mothers.
The results of this study are thus. First, expansion of childcare facilities and improvement of the quality of childcare are most important, and the childcare facilities within the workplace should also be expanded and improved. Second, ways to reduce the tax of houses with infants, lower the cost of childcare, and increase maternity leave must be positively sought after. Third, with an overwhelming majority of working mothers (73.5%) perceiving that infant care is handled with less importance than other policies, the government needs to come up promptly with a counterplan. Fourth, considering that parents have the most influence over infants, one must establish a way to increase opportunity for parents to receive parental education about infant care. Fifth, currently the laws on infant and child care state that guardians are responsible for the cost of childcare, and place the responsibility on the individual. Aid is given to those on welfare only, so support must be extended to the middle class as well.