"The Mother Should Stay Home to Care for the Child" Is Now a Thing of the Past... Reversed for the First Time in 18 Years

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[The Financial News] Public perception that "young children should be cared for at home by their mother" has fallen by half over the past 18 years. For the first time since the survey began, the share of respondents who disagreed with the statement has surpassed those who agreed.
On the 18th, KIHASA announced the results of the 20th Korean Welfare Panel Study and analysis, which surveyed 7,300 households in the first half of last year.
The survey found that 34.12% of respondents disagreed with the statement that "children should be cared for at home by their mother." By contrast, 33.83% said they agreed, narrowly trailing the opposing view. It was the first time since the item was added in 2007 that disagreement had outpaced agreement.
Breaking it down further, 27.86% said they "disagreed" with the idea that a mother should care for children at home, while 6.26% said they "strongly disagreed."
Meanwhile, 26.91% said they "agreed" and 6.92% said they "strongly agreed," while 32.05% answered that they neither agreed nor disagreed.
This shows a clear shift in attitudes compared with the first survey in 2007.
At the time, 64.7% of respondents said they agreed that "young children should be cared for at home by their mother" (16.4% strongly agreed and 48.3% agreed). By contrast, only 17.7% disagreed (15.9% disagreed and 1.7% strongly disagreed).
As a result, the share of respondents who agreed fell to 33.83% from 64.7% over 18 years, roughly halving, while the share who disagreed nearly doubled from 17.7% to 34.12%. In other words, while two out of three people said at the time of the first survey that mothers should care for children at home, only one out of three now agrees.
Meanwhile, KIHASA has conducted annual surveys of the Korean Welfare Panel Study, launched in 2006, and has also carried out supplementary surveys on welfare perceptions every three years. The question of whether children should be cared for at home by their mother is included in the supplementary welfare perception survey.
newssu@fnnews.com Kim Su-yeon Reporter