KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

This study presents the vision and paradigm for the policies regarding women and families by selecting the direction of policies and tasks in the major areas including income guarantee, child care, elderly care, and family laws to realize the 2030 future family scenario (a loose but intimate family). Delphi method was utilized as a major research method.

To cope with the future family, open and flexible systems were emphasized, which can be changed in many ways according to the relations between the members instead of a closed and fixed system, which focuses on one person or a group oriented system.

The research results show that major strategic concepts for the future family include 'freedom from fixed life cycle,' 'cooperation among various social subjects', 'implementation of daily care by informal systems,' 'free from blood ties', etc. These concepts materialized in each policy sector. So 'income guarantee' means 'minimizing the family burden', 'child care' means 'implementation of organic care environment,' elderly care means 'the realization of social care' and 'family laws' mean 'free from blood-tie oriented family structure.' Therefore, the concepts of policy paradigm for the future family include 'flexibility,' 'organic traits,' and 'accessibility.' Flexibility means a flexible policy design that copes with the changes and circumstances of family relations instead of specific family type supports. 'Organic traits' means that the policies are supposed to be connected mutually by focusing on family perspective and not on providers' fragmented perspectives. 'Accessibility' means the implementation of policies in terms of a small unit (region) that connects the policies and users to increase the effectiveness of organic policy connection and a flexible policy design. This kind of policy paradigm materialized in each sector's policy discussion.

Income guarantee: In 2030, the duty of family support will become loose due to the changes in family types. In addition, the types of employment will be diversified, so the people who prepare for old age income with the public pension will decrease gradually. To minimize the family burden, strengthening the social safety network, reducing the burden of child fostering cost for family members, the customized support for each generation of family, and the multi-layered old - age income security system were suggested in sequence. The policies for income guarantee enable people to cope with various risks in their lives and minimize family burden such as the national basic livelihood institution as a social safety network, individual old age income systems including basic pension and public pension, children's allowance that reduces the burden of child fostering, etc.

Child care: Child care in 2030 demands the implementation of organic care environment by restructuring the social systems to cope with child care in stable condition in spite of many changes in terms of parent's situations or conditions and developing alternative child care resources. For this purpose, 'daily care guarantee by strengthening the balance between work and life', 'activating local communities for the resocialization of child care', 'constructing a platform to help the role conversion of fathers,' and ' readjusting the projects of the central government and local governments were presented in sequence.

Child care policies pursue the social sharing method through active participation and cooperation by various subjects such as the government, corporations, local communities, males, etc. This is the process of reconstructing the daily care of parents by connecting work and life of parents under the value of 'sharing social values and roles' in the parents' perspectives who are the policy users. The restructuring of parents' work area is realized by the promotion of father platform. As a result, it enables them to guarantee the daily care time of parents and equal participation in child care by both genders. The regional restructuring is realized by the activation of local community groups, father platform, and the promotion of role adjustment between the central and local government. As a result, they are supposed to provide diversified care resources, sufficient care infra, and gender-equal participation.

The elderly care: The future family in 2030 is expected to have a deep void due to the strengthening of individual values within the family and the separation of generations, and ageing population. So as for the elderly care, the responsibility of family should be reduced by realizing the social care, and 'the right to be cared' is very important. For this purpose, the priority policies include 'improvement of public support in the long-term care,' 'construction of local community based care system,' 'diversification of care resources,' and 'daily care support' according to order priority. Although its order priority is not so high, the daily care support means the diversification of the elderly care, ranging from the daily care to high level patient caregiver service to cope with the ageing population. To cope with the ageing population and one's prolonged old days, it's very important for a person to have an independent daily life in the area that he or she lives in. Therefore, the most urgent policy is 'improvement of public support in the long-term care,' but the 'construction of local community based care system' and 'the diversification of care resources' should be promoted at the same time to be the foundation of 'daily care support.'

Family laws: In 2030, many environmental changes in family laws such as various family types, diversification of married relations, the increase of illegitimate children and artificial insemination, an aged society, and the increase of single-person households are expected. To cope with this actively, 'free from the blood-tie oriented family law structure' is important. For this, streamlining the domestic relations law, the paternity law, the supporting law, and the statutory inheritance law was suggested in sequence. As for the detailed tasks, the new laws to cope with the future family were suggested as follows; 'the protection of common-law marriage, cohabitation, the same-sex marriage‘, 'the introduction of stipulated regulations on the legal status for an artificially seminated or vitro fertilized baby, and a surrogate baby,' 'the introduction of educational support systems for grownup children,' 'making stipulations for the parents' duty to support minor children,' 'the introduction of support systems after divorce,' and 'introducing the principle of priority in terms of public support for the elderly parents'