A Survey of the Current Child Care Practices of Professional Working Mothers
Young Lee
Abstract
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.
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