Institutional Options,Cultural Orientation and Mothers’ Work and Family Reconciliation in Korea

This paper examines what determines mothers' work and family reconciliation in the Republic of Korea. We conducted a survey to examine the influence of use of institutional options such as childcare leave and services, and cultural orientation towards gender roles on the probability of being employed, paid and unpaid care work time, and monthly wages. Our findings show that mothers' with high education tend to be in paid work and to have more traditional attitudes towards gender role. The use of maternity leave increases but the use of parental leave tends to decrease mothers' labor market participation. Maternity leave also is found to influence positively on working mothers' monthly wages. However, no factor is found to be relevant to reduce working mothers' time spent on unpaid care work. Issues have been put forwarded for policy considerations. Firstly, the use of maternity leave should be encouraged and job protection needs to be secured with the use of parental leave. Secondly, mothers with relatively higher education tend to prefer familial care to institutional care. Last but not least, the availability of institutional care services do not effectively reduce mothers' time spent on unpaid care work.     

The Effects of Family-Friendly Policies and Workplace Social Support on Parenting Stress in Employed Mothers Working Nonstandard Hours

This study examines whether family-friendly policies (childcare leave, on-site childcare, and flexible working hours) and workplace social support (supervisor and coworker support) in South Korea are directly related to parenting stress among employed mothers with nonstandard work schedules. In addition, this study investigates the moderating role of family-supportive organization perceptions in the aforesaid associations. Data were collected from 223 employed mothers who have nonstandard work schedules with at least one or more children under the age of six. Results show that on-site childcare, flexible working hours, and supervisor support are negatively associated with parenting stress, whereas childcare leave is positively associated with parenting stress. Employed mothers with high family-supportive organization perceptions report low levels of parenting stress when they received high levels of supervisor support or did not take childcare leave. Additionally, employed mothers with low family-supportive organization perceptions report high levels of parenting stress when they did not use on-site childcare. Consequently, our findings indicate that employed mothers’ greater family-supportive organization perceptions are key factor reducing their parenting stress when they are limited to use family-friendly policies. Implications are discussed in terms of the importance of work-family intervention to the work-family balance among mothers working nonstandard hours.     

Professional Identity,Job Satisfaction,and Retention of Licensed Social Workers in Korea

This paper reports the results from a survey of 735 social workers in South Korea on their professional identity as a social worker, job satisfaction, and intention to leave the profession. The overall result shows that there was a high level of job satisfaction. Social workers' intention to leave the profession was significantly related to their integrated feelings of professional identity. This relationship was partially mediated by job satisfaction. Social workers' sense of professional identity can be tapped to help social workers feel adequate to carry out their professional responsibility. Boundaries of their practice should be well defined.     

Childcare policies and services in Hong Kong after the handover: Beyond a feminist critique

This article reviews the development of childcare policies and services in Hong Kong after the handover, gauging it with two standards: promoting the equal development of children and gender equality in our society. Statistics derived from data taken from multiple sources show that the government has been sticking to a “positive non‐intervention approach” to welfare development and that the male breadwinner/female carer model prevalent in this region was shaped and strengthened by current childcare policies and services. The current provision of childcare services is insufficient to guarantee the equal use of childcare among children of different socioeconomic backgrounds, or to ease the tension between the needs of childcare and job requirements in a family, or to emancipate married women from the domestic sphere. A “generative welfare approach” that collects fiscal resources and redistributes them strategically with a systemic mind‐set has been suggested for social policy and service planning, including spending the money in the right place, launching smart and practical policies that can achieve both pragmatic effects and ideological improvement in the area of gender equality, providing financial support or subsidies to a company for the provision of parental leave, and increasing the provision of quality childcare services.     

A Confucian War over Childcare? Practice and Policy in Childcare and Their Implications for Understanding the Korean Gender Regime

We ask about the development of childcare policies in Korea and what these mean for our understanding of the gender assumptions of Korean governments. Women's labour market participation has been increasing rapidly, with married women now much more likely to be in the labour market. The provision and regulation around support for women's employment, and especially for mothers’ employment, is a key issue and problem for Korean women and for governments. A number of policies give the impression that the Korean government is moving rapidly towards a policy for reconciling work and family based on a dual‐earner model of the family. But we argue that a close inspection of these policies suggests that the state is still playing a residual role, legislation is not effectively implemented, and government is giving way to the private sector and to the family in responsibility for childcare. Mothers’ accounts of their lives centre on a childcare war played out beneath the apparently harmonious Confucian surface, with resisting husbands supported by powerful mothers‐in‐law, and daily struggles over the management of services. The Korean government and its policy‐makers, far from moving rapidly towards a dual‐earner model of the family, are still rooted in Confucian ideals.     

Sources of social support,job satisfaction,and quality of life among childcare teachers

Although literature has suggested a link between social support and well-being, relatively little research has examined the association of social support with job satisfaction and quality of life for employees. This study aimed to investigate whether and how different sources of social support influenced quality of life in conjunction with job satisfaction among teachers. Two-hundred and eighty-one childcare teachers in Korea completed measures of social support, job satisfaction, and quality of life. The results revealed that while director and colleague support predicted job satisfaction, director and family support predicted quality of life after controlling for age and marital status. Furthermore, results showed that job satisfaction mediated the relationship between director support and quality of life. The findings suggest the protecting role of different sources of social support in teachers’ job experience and evaluation of life domains. Suggestions for future research and implications for improving childcare teachers’ quality of life are discussed.     

Who uses public childcare for 2‐year‐old children? Coherent family policies and usage patterns in Sweden,Finland and Western Germany

European countries have increased their public childcare provision for children under age 3. However, it is unclear if and how usage patterns differ across countries. This study examined the relationship between the socio‐economic characteristics of mothers and the use of childcare for 2‐year‐old children. Using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for the years 2005–2008, we analysed the characteristics of mothers and usage patterns in Sweden, Finland and Western Germany. To single out the effect of maternal employment, working and non‐working mothers were investigated separately. Our findings showed that, in Sweden, a country with strong support for dual‐earner families, usage was largely independent of mothers' characteristics. However, in Western Germany, where more support is given to male breadwinner families, and in Finland, a country with pluralistic family support, highly educated mothers were found to be more likely to use childcare than were mothers with lower levels of education.     

Working parents with young children: cross-national comparisons of policies and programmes in three countries

Multiple global trends are putting pressure on governments to develop policies and programmes that meet the needs of families with children aged 0–3. This cross-national analysis focuses on policies and programmes of parental leave and childcare in the United States, Sweden and Japan. Cross-national studies of early childhood education and care are reviewed. National profiles are provided of demographic, economic, political and socio-cultural characteristics and of parental leave and childcare policies and programmes. Policies and programmes are compared in relation to equity of coverage and support of basic parental childrearing and child-protection responsibilities. Issues raised highlight the need for unified programmes and policies, and continuing global dialogue regarding the needs of this population.     

Diverging Paths? A Comparative Look at Childcare Policies in Japan,South Korea and Taiwan

This article compares state policies to support childcare in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, using fuzzy set ideal type analysis to determine the nature of institutional arrangements with respect to labour, money and time provisions. We then note their implications for familialization and defamilialization in the three countries. Our analysis suggests a common pattern towards the increased use of financial support amongst the three countries over time; however, this commonality does not mean their childcare policies are converging, as the financial supports differ in focus, with Japan concentrating on familialization by valuing family care, and Korea exclusively employing policy to facilitate the use of market‐based care services. For its part, Taiwan has been strengthening familialization by increasing the leave compensation to value time off to provide care. The different labour, money and time dimensions vis‐à‐vis the familialization/defamilialization matrix suggest varying implications of institutional arrangements for gender.     

Relational ethics as a cultural constraint on fathers' parental leave in a Confucian welfare state,South Korea

Promoting fathers' parental leave has recently become of major policy interest in many welfare states. The Korean Government also introduced paid parental leave for working fathers in 2001 and has increasingly strengthened such incentive schemes. However, despite its rapid advancement, fathers' utilisation of parental leave is increasing slowly and most fathers still opt out of their responsibilities for childcare. As sociocultural norms are a primary cause of this low take-up behaviour pattern, this study focuses on the Confucian relational ethics deeply embedded in Korean society. Through in-depth interviews with 15 Korean working couples, this article demonstrates how Confucian relational ethics constrain fathers from enjoying their individual right to parental leave by designating them as last-resort caregivers within families and as forefront workers in the workplace. This study shows the importance of the sociocultural grounding of a society to ordinary citizens when they utilise a social policy in their daily lives.     

Gender Equality Revisited – Changes in Nordic Childcare Policies in the 2000s

The Nordic childcare policy model is often reviewed and even recommended internationally for its contribution to gender equality, high female labour force participation and, perhaps more indirectly, to a high fertility rate. Nordic childcare services and parental leave schemes have thus been portrayed in the literature as policies which have managed to facilitate a work–family model of dual earners and dual carers. However, the recent introduction of cash‐for‐care schemes seems to go against the Nordic dual earner/dual carer model and ideals of gender equality, in supporting parental (maternal) care of the child in the home. At the same time, new upcoming trends of political fatherhood and the perspective of lifelong learning for the child are also changing the Nordic childcare model. This article provides an analysis of how new childcare policy goals have been articulated into policies from the late 1990s to the late 2000s and how these may challenge the traditional goals of the Nordic welfare states.     

Gender,work, and childcare in Kazakhstan,Mongolia, and Russia

The current study seeks to understand the nature of gender relations within a post‐Soviet welfare model in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia. On the basis of the analysis of key labour market indicators, parental leave, and childcare policies, it finds that the welfare models in the three countries are hybrid, and neither authoritarianism in Kazakhstan and Russia nor democracy in Mongolia lead to substantive gender equality outcomes. Persistent gender inequality in these countries is underpinned by the neo‐liberal approach to welfare provision, conservative social norms, and limited agency of civil society to influence the policy agenda. Nonetheless, these states have distributed to the population with an emphasis on working mothers, and this policy choice has been driven by economic, demographic, and political considerations, which ultimately serve to support, rather than transform, the patriarchal power structure in these societies.     

Through the gender lens: a comparison of family policy in Sweden and China

In this study, Sweden and China's family policies, with a specific focus on their effect on gender equality, are compared. We describe the different goals and objectives of parental/maternity leave and childcare policies. The effect of family policies on gender equality, indicated by equal employment opportunities for women and the gender division of labour in the family in the two countries, is also discussed. A systematic comparison revealed that both countries included the promotion of gender equality in their policy agendas, but they varied in design and implementation. Swedish family policies assume childcare is a public concern, and women's participation in the labour market and men's involvement in childcare are considered to be crucial to achieving gender equality. In contrast, China's family policies emphasize women's participation in the labour market, but overlook the gender division of household work and childcare at home.     

Work/life balance policy in Germany: Promoting equal partnership in families

Across the OECD, public policies seek to support parents in achieving their desired work/life balance. This article introduces the background to and issues at stake in promoting equal partnerships in families in Germany. Families in Germany face considerable challenges to spending more time together and achieving a more gender‐balanced reconciliation of work and family life, as paid work hours for fathers are long on full‐time jobs and many women are in part‐time jobs. Family policy can play an important role and Germany has made substantial progress in supporting families ahead of and after the birth of a child. Important in this regard are the parental leave reforms of 2007 and 2015 and the extension of childcare supports that better enable fathers and mothers to combine work and family commitments. The article assesses recent developments in family policies in Germany while also drawing from the experiences of countries with longstanding policies to support work/life balance and strengthen gender equality.     

Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter?

Kröger T. Lone mothers and the puzzles of daily life: do care regimes really matter? Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 390–401 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article studies childcare patterns and day‐to‐day strategies of 111 working lone mothers from Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK, and asks whether their arrangements are prescribed by care regimes. Lone mothers' arrangements are grouped into five based on the availability and use of different formal and informal childcare resources. The article argues that, even though lone mothers have a more favourable starting point in Finland and France compared with Britain, Italy and Portugal where formal childcare coverage is patchier, childcare arrangements are not very dissimilar within different care regimes. Instead, similarities across care regimes are highlighted. Formal provisions have their limitations in all the countries studied and in all cases significant expectations are placed on informal childcare. The availability of informal childcare cannot, however, be taken for granted in any country, and working lone mothers whose informal and formal resources do not adequately meet their childcare needs were located in every care regime, facing care poverty.     

The Effect of Infancy Childcare Center Use and Maternal Employment on Toddlers’ Language Development in South Korea

Using first to fourth wave data of the Panel Study of Korean Children (PSKC), this study explores the effects of childcare center use, maternal employment, and other child and familial characteristics on the language development of toddlers in Korea. Among the 2078 families with children in the PSKC, those who completed the Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test at the fourth wave were selected, and a small number of disabled or prematurely born children were excluded. In addition, to clarify the effects of maternal employment, families with mothers who were either employed or unemployed for three consecutive years during the child's infancy were selected. Regression analysis showed that neither childcare center use nor maternal employment during infancy had significant effects on toddlers’ expressive and receptive vocabulary at the fourth wave. Family characteristics, such as household poverty and maternal education level, as well as child characteristics, such as gender and birth order, had significant effects on expressed vocabulary. However, only children's gender significantly affected the receptive vocabulary level of toddlers.     

Paid parental leave and other supports for parents with young children: The United States in international comparison

The United States is at a crossroads in its policies for families and women. Currently, the United States provides basic support for children, fathers, and mothers in the form of unpaid parental leave, child‐related tax breaks, and limited public child care. In contrast, the other member states of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) empower families through paid parental leave and comprehensive investments in infants and children. The potential gains from strengthening these policies in the United States are enormous. Paid parental leave and subsidized child‐care help to get and keep more women in the workforce, contribute to economic growth, offer cognitive and health benefits to children, and give parents options in defining their preferred work‐life strategy. Indeed, the United States has been falling behind the rest of the OECD in many social and economic indicators by not adequately investing in children, fathers and mothers. Given the significant payoffs to these family supports, this article focuses on issues of reconciling work and care commitments for families with young children, and, in particular, on paid parental leave policies within the OECD and the United States.     

On Childcare as a Support for Maternal Employment Wages and Hours

Data from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a stratified random sample of 1,364 children and their families from birth through first grade, were used to examine whether mothers' use of early childcare for their children predicted later maternal employment. Children's total number of hours in childcare was associated with higher maternal wages and more hours of employment when children were in first grade. The association between maternal hourly wages and hours in childcare was greater for mothers who were more educated. In addition, the effect of hours in childcare on employment hours was greater for non-poor mothers.