In the modern society female employed population has been rapidly increased because of not only family nuclearization but also educational improvement and expanded social participation. Recently, the trend that women pursue a full-life job facilitated...
In the modern society female employed population has been rapidly increased because of not only family nuclearization but also educational improvement and expanded social participation. Recently, the trend that women pursue a full-life job facilitated increase of the married female employees, which resulted in a difficulty of parenting in a family. In addition, the increase of married female employment resulted in that children can no longer take a direct parenting from a mother in their house like before. If nobody is available for parenting thus, they cannot help but being neglected and accordingly are exposed to a risk of comprehensive development. Therefore, social service is on the need to supplement parenting, which became a matter that requires social and national actions as well as individual efforts to be solved. Yet institutional or systematic policies about infant and toddler parenting have not been set up despite of high demand on it. Thus, many married women experience difficulties in proceeding parenting and job activities at the same time.
In particular, married female soldiers take more burdens as they have to rely on home baby-sitting or relatives to take care of their children with expensive day-care costs. It is not easy to use local daycare facilities because they work under bad conditions of military's own environment such as frequent night works, workplace transfer, emergency mobilization and training, working in a remote area, etc. Furthermore, as female soldiers are continuously increasing in the military organization, it is urgent to prepare a solution for daycare problems.
Therefore the study here is intended to suggest how to activate workplace daycare facilities by understanding the current status of the married female soldiers and their needs on those facilities.
In sum the study can be concluded like followings.
First, in terms of special features of a military job, married female soldiers are mainly relying on baby-sitters rather than facility nursery. In this case, the former costs 100,000 or 200,000 won more than the other so that they have to bear more economic burdens. In addition, most of them have thought to quit the job because of the nursery problem; 44.1% quit due to children's emotional development and education problems and 8.5% due to no place to send children for nursery. This means that increase of female's social participation causes growth of the number of married females but without sufficient nursery facilities to support them. Thus nursing children is the most important obstacle for married female soldiers to keep job activities.
Second, the survey on their demand on workplace daycare facilities showed most of them think it necessary and will use extended nursing due to their unspecified commuting times and emergent training, etc. Those who answered not to use extended nursing thought it is troublesome to drop off and pick up children every day.
Third, a proper price range for workplace daycare service they think is between 160,000 and 200,000won. This is cheaper than baby-sitters or facility nursing by about 100,000 to 200,000won. They also suggest that a workplace daycare system should be focus on children's emotional development and education the most because their demand on professional and systematic protection and education service is increasing as parents are getting more interested in fostering their children.
Based on the above result the study suggests the ways to facilitate workplace daycare facilities for married female soldiers like below.
First, not only financial and institutional support but also specific administrative processes should be equipped for married female soldiers and to operate workplace daycare facilities.
Second, it is necessary to obtain workplace nursing facilities that can reflect special features of a military job such as early attendance time, irregular closing time, on-duty works, emergent training, etc.
Third, physical environment as well as high-level nursing service should be provided to promote workplace daycare facilities.
Finally, it is needed to obtain those facilities and prepare supports from central and local government for military daycare services through civil-government-military cooperation. Also, reflecting people's preference on national and public daycare service is required to build a basis to provide inexpensive and excellent nursing programs.
Like the above the study suggested some ways to facilitate workplace daycare facilities for married female soldiers, who have difficulties to run job performance and parenting side by side in a special environment of the military. Considering the fact that by now a basic responsibility of child nursing has been given primarily to women, it is very important to obtain nursing service support and provision of workplace daycare facilities for child nursing because nursing problems are directly related to emotional stability of married female employees. In addition, the matter requires keen interests of the military and long-term strategies not only to help soldiers with children to concentrated in national defense without concern of nursing but also to reduce parents' burdens and promote healthy growth of children in the perspective of future national competitiveness.