KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Korea’s full-scale childcare policies began to be implemented as birthrates lowered rapidly. Despite the quantitative and qualitative expansion of childcare service, childcare is still the biggest challenge for women. In particular, since childcare policies have thus far focused on infants and babies, policy assistance of care for children in elementary or higher schools has been insufficient.

"A Study on The Conditions of Working Moms and Firms’ Responses" (2010) conducted by the Samsung Economic Research Institute reported that the biggest challenges working moms face while trying to balance family and work were‘practices and atmosphere in the organization’ (53.7%),‘conflicts with supervisors and colleagues in such unexpected situations as when they had to leave their work to others to take care of their children’(29.2%),‘their children and people related their schools (teachers and the parents of the friends of their children’ (27.4%),‘conflicts with their husbands’(18.4),‘conflicts with their mothers, mother-in-laws, or helpers to take care of their children’ (10.6%). In short, most of the challenges had to do with childcare. In fact, the most answered challenge had a good deal to do with the difficulties they had in living their family lives: they complained about empty family-friendly arrangements which were guaranteed in theory but could not be used in practice and excessive overtime work and holiday work. The study also reported that while 27.4 percent of working moms with children younger than eight years old answered that they had conflicts with their children, 37.8 percent of working moms with eight or older children answered so. This means that working moms with children who attend schools tend to have more conflicts with their children. To the question of what ages of their children were the most difficult years to them, 41.1 percent of working moms with children who attended schools answered the years of lower grades in elementary schools. This shows that children’s entrance into elementary schools gives great difficulties to working moms in their effort to balance family and work. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that childcare needs to be concentrated in infanthood and babyhood, elementary school kids need a great deal of care, too. People tend to underestimate the necessity for care for elementary school kids who are thought to be able to take care of themselves as infants and babies cannot. But they have serious difficulties in acquiring proper everyday care like havingmeals as they are often left alone until their parents come home after work or during breaks. Still, public childcare service systems for elementary school kids are insufficient relative to those for infants and babies.

The "All Day Maternal Childcare Service"that the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology has implemented beginning in 2011 for all the elementary schools in Korea has laid an institutional ground for universal afterschool childcare for elementary school kids. It is necessary for the government to keep extending such childcare. In extending such childcare service, it is important to know exactly what elementary school kids from dual-income families need. Previous studies showed that they hoped to spend time after school in more intimate and comfortable spaces rather than schools and nurseries in light of their experiences in public childcare service. Children did not know how to use time after school, was anxious about their security as they were left alone, had difficulties in havingtimely snacks and meals, and did not get proper care when they got sick or encountered emergencies. Though this has been termed "absence of care," "absence of caregivers"should be more correct. For, should somebody give care to such children for their parents, their needs could be satisfied.

This study investigates to what extent demands for care for children from dual-income families are satisfied by existing public childcare assistance services and what and why loopholes remain in these services, attempting to develop additional services to fill the loopholes. In particular, this study approaches the subject matter from the perspective of "absence of caregivers" rather than "absence of care" for the reason mentioned above. This study also attempts to develop a model for childcare assistance that takes into account ordinary, concrete, and minute aspects of childcare because the demands of dual-income families are ordinary, concrete, and minute.

This study consists of five parts. First, it surveys the present conditions of dual-income families and their children attending elementary schools. Second, the study looks at the specifics of public childcare services for elementary school kids such as the childcare service provided by the Ministry of gender equality and family, the after school childcare service provided by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the elementary school childcare classroom service provided by and how these public services are used. "Census Data in 2005" published by the National Statistical Office showed that elementary school kids accounted for 39.2 percent of all the children in dual-income families (21.3 percent for first to third graders and 17.9 percent for fourth to sixth graders), while infants and babies accounted for 24 percent. Yet the users of the public services amounted to 544,961 which wasonly 39.4 percent of all the elementary school kid (1,384,065 in which the number of fourth to sixth graders was 752,197 and that of first to third graders was 631,958). This clearly showed that public childcare assistance was very insufficient. Third, the study surveys the actual conditions of care assistance for elementary school kids from dual-income families. We first review previous studies whose findings about the difficulties elementary schools kids face were mentioned above. We then conduct an analysis of a national data containing variables about the actual conditions of childcare in dual-income families. An analysis of the data from "Social Survey" (2010) by the National Statistical Office showed that elementary school children of full-time working moms were left alone or in private educational institutions longer than were those of part-time working moms.This suggested that there were childcare gaps between children of full-time and part-time working moms due to different time constraints the two groups faced and that public childcare assistance are more urgent for children of full-time working moms. Fourth, we conducted focus group discussion (FGD) to see the demands for childcare service for dual-income families with elementary school kids. We looked at the nature, forms, contents, and methods of childcare assistance needed for dual-income families based on discussions with 45 working moms who had first, second, or third graders and asked whether they would use the test childcare service programs we developed. As a result of FGD, we could find lack of care due to the absence of caregivers for children and identify demands community-based childcare service. When children enteredelementary schools, childcare loopholes in the absence of caregivers occurred before they went to the school and after the school is over. Working moms had difficulties in managing their children’s schedules to eliminate or reduce the loopholes of childcare. There were serious concerns about children’s emotional anxiety due to being left alone, lack of safety, and lack of nutritional management for children. Though these problems applied to any working moms, they were most serious for full-timers. Though part-time working moms had longer free time, they still had their own difficulties in childcare especially when they were employed in occupations in which there was less flexibility in changing shifts. The biggest reason for these childcare loopholes is that elementary schools and nurseries for pre-school children are different from each other in the ways in which they provide childcare, respectively. While pre-school children spend all day and obtain all the necessary cares in the nursery, elementary school children normally stay in the school only during class. Finally, we proposed a community-based childcare service network model and the methods of its implementation to solve the childcare problems for elementary school children from dual-income families.In the proposed model, proximate care is provided to children, somebody must be there with them, and various resources are used which can be connected to childcare. The model will activate community-based childcare and be able to not only coexist with existing childcare assistance programs but also provide additional services to fill their loopholes.