'기러기아빠'의 비동거 가족경험 = Experiences of the "Geese-Fathers" Family Life

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study is to find out how so-called the 'Geese-Fathers' experience their family life. In general Geese-Fathers make money in Korea and send it to their family members for their living and children's tuition fee. Based on qualitative research, the research method uses in-depth interview. The subjects of the interview are 20 Geese-Fathers who are doctors, lawyers, professors, and businessmen, etc. The problem areas covered in the schedule included: who made the decisions to live apart from one another for their children's education; any changes after separation in physical, emotional, social, and economic conditions; how to cope with various hardships; how they communicate; how often they get together; are there any positive aspects when living alone?; how they expect their family would be like in the future?
The author extracted 112 concepts, 35 subcategories, and 13 categories through open coding. The author named the core phenomenon 'To bring up my children well in spite of everything' and the causal condition 'The feeling of sameness of parents toward their children(Identity of Parents-Children)'. And the author named the contextual conditions 'Fear' and 'Negative experiences', and the intervening conditions 'The issues of Korean education systems', 'The recent trend', 'The characteristics of family members', and' Internationalization, globalization, and the spread of information technology'. And the action/reaction strategy is 'Living apart from one another(that means father staying in Korea, and mother and children staying abroad) for educating their children'. The consequences are 'Satisfaction of all family members', 'Enjoying the present situation', 'There is no other way than living apart in spite of Goose-Father's unsatisfaction', and 'Family disruption(including divorce)'. The author also suggested the core category and the story line.
This study suggests that the Goose-Family is one of the variant postmodern family forms generated by individualization and globalization. The Goose-Family is a remote controlled family, and plastic family. This study suggests that in this postmodern world imbued with globalization and individualization, the pastoral carers and counselors should be prepared to meet the various kinds of family members' needs, and variant family forms themselves. The pastoral counselors and the church are supposed to offer them selfobject milieu in the ministry of presence.