As participation of women in economic activities gradually increase, care work that women were responsible for can no longer be fully satisfied. Despite increased amount of time consumed for economic activities, women are still responsible for the most of care work. Physical, psychological, and economic burden from child support and elder care can not only push individual females to their limits but also affect families and the society to experience difficulties. Although social support for the care work is necessary, South Korea completely lacks researches done on care work nor has a clear definition of care work. Moreover, female status is being overlooked in the process of designing and implementing policies.
By recognizing such conditions, we conducted a study on "Social Support Measures for Care Work" in 2005. Based on the research result, we attempted to compile a more inclusive, detailed analysis on care work and circumstances surrounding people providing care work. Key contents of the research is specific details of care work within families, time spent for care work, and stress associated with care work. Care work recipient is categorized into child, handicapped child, and elder. The handicapped were difficult to include into the categories since they were extremely segmented by type and rank, hence only handicapped child is included. Other important contents of the research is the suggestion on the design of social support policy for care work within families compiled based on the research on trends and features of care work support policies of developed countries and the actual conditions of care work in respective countries.
Major research method used was survey questionnaire and time-diary analysis. Survey was conducted between August 1 - September 28, 2006 in Seoul and Gyeonggi region by Korea Gallup. Questionnaire contained questions on background of respondents, care work situation, and care work obligation and detailed category of each subject was designed to be flexible. For time-diary analysis, 10-minute interval was used for activities of respondents during 24 hours a day. Respondents were asked to categorized their activities by "care code" and fill in the report for total of three days (two weeks days and one weekend day). Child care code was divided into 59 subcategories for 10 subjects, handicapped child care code was divided into 62 subcategories for 10 subjects, and elder care code was divided into 72 subcategories for 10 subjects. Comprehensive sample design was used according to the number of samples allocated for each group. Target population was selected using purposive sampling and survey was taken as a one-on-one interview with the interviewer. Target population was total of 1,001 households consisted of 401 households with child, 200 households with handicapped child, and 400 households with elders.
Major findings are as follows.
First, time spent on child care within each individual family by mother was 1 day, 11 hours and 36 minutes. 94.5% of the respondents were nuclear families consisted of the parents and children, and approximately mothers of 80% of these respondents were responsible for child care. Women's time and physical obligation was large overall and this result implied the women's realities surrounding care work obligation in individual families. Approximately 70% of all respondents were using non-parental care facilities and use of the service increased with the age of the child, reflecting high demand for such services. However, child care participation of fathers were 45 minutes for week days and 2 hours and 20 minutes for weekends, which was significantly smaller amount of time compared to care work time consumed by mothers. This finding indicated that participation and time spent by fathers in child care work is insufficient. As for care work obligation, child care stress showed a highest mean (3.52) of four categories. Child care stress of working mother (3.28), parent role stress (3.11), and non-parental care stress (2.86) followed child care stress showing high level of care work stress for most of the categories. The result emphasized that universal approach to the care service and guaranteed quality and enlargement of services are necessary along with extended social support to families needing child care through economic support for child care, increased time spent for child care by fathers, and practical support policy for child care of working mothers.
Second, handicapped child care was mainly done by mothers and average daily care time was 13 hours and 16 minutes - all the free time besides sleeping time were spent on handicapped child care. Withdrawal rate from employment for mothers of handicapped children appeared to be 90.6%. 81.4% of respondents were receiving help from their husbands but the help was limited due to characteristics of a handicap (average care time spent by fathers was 2 hours and 15 minutes). As a result, time, physical, and mental obligations of mothers were enormous. For expenses, monthly average of 777,300 won was spent on handicapped child care which was approximately 1/3 of total monthly household income. This result indicated high use of non-traditional education facilities due to handicaps of the children (80%). Children under the age of three had relatively high education organization use rate (83.3%) compared to non-handicapped child (35%). Care work obligation was divided into categories of physical, mental, social, and economic obligation. Overall mean was 3.61 which indicates high stress associated with handicapped child care. Economic burden was the major problem for most of the households and a need was emphasized for physical and mental rest and participation in social activities for mothers, the main care givers, to reduce their care work obligation. Especially, services provided for the handicapped children only focused on education related services for an individual child and did not well-meet needs of the families. These insufficient services emphasized the importance of diversity in services and solid system through establishment of consistent support system, availability of service coordinators for each region, and support on family care.
Third, main care givers for elders spent 12 hours and 54 minutes daily on average, which is more than half of the 24 hours available during a day. Employed main care givers spent 9 hours and 44 minutes and unemployed main care givers spent 13 hours and 38 minutes in doing care work. Although care work time of the employed was relatively shorter, they still spent long time for taking care of the elders indicating even the employed care givers faced a heavy burden. Of the five categories of personal and social restriction, physical and mental health, value in taking care of the elders, relationship with the elders who receive, and economic expense, value for personal and social restriction had the highest score of 14.96 indicating it as the biggest stress source. Physical and mental health (14.68), economic expense (13.67), and relationship with the elders receiving care (11.03) followed. On the other hand, value in taking care of the elders had comparatively low score. Care givers had positive thoughts about giving cares to elders and showed low stress arising from negative value assessment. There were virtually no support system for the families responsible for elder care despite their many hardships, but there were various policies for the elders themselves. This indicated a strong need for consistent effort on providing measures to reduce families' time spent on care giving and the stress associated. Once public elder care guarantee system is implemented in 2008, there will be various services and support available for elder care expense. However, considering that it is hard to satisfy all demands associated with care work, temporary vacation system was emphasized as an important system for supporting the time of care givers.
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