Lee, Jaerim & Jean W. Bauer. 2013. Motivations for Providing and Utilizing Child Care by Grandmothers in South Korea. Journal of Marriage and Family 75:381-402.
Grandparents providing extensive child care to their grandchildren has been quite common in East Asia. This article aims to construct a conceptual understanding of the motivations of grandmothers and mothers to provide and utilize child care by grandmothers in Korea. The authors use grounded theory to collect and analyze interviews with 21 matched pairs of caregiving grandmothers and employed mothers. They analyze the grandmothers’ motivations to provide child care and employed mothers’ motivation to receive it at the same time. Grandparents are concerned about their adult children’s well-being and a feeling of responsibility to fulfill their parental responsibility for support. Employed mothers receive the grandparental child care because of their trust of family care better than that from non-family members. Familism as a core culture still plays a significant role, but the article offers two additional findings: bilateral faimilism and supporting traditional gender role ideology. Both paternal and maternal grandmothers get involved in child care in the context of the decline of male-breadwinner and increase of maternal employment.
隔代抚养在东亚非常普遍。这篇文章用扎根理论，通过21对奶奶/外婆以及工作妈妈的访谈来剖析，奶奶/外婆提供隔代抚养的动力来源以及妈妈们接受这些帮助的原因。男女双方的母亲都会考虑到自己孩子的身体健康，觉得为孩子提供力所能及的帮助是他们应尽的义务。尤其是男方的母亲，如果他们不能提供充足的经济支持的话，她们往往会尽可能让妈妈们出去工作赚取必须的家用，而自己承担照顾第三代的工作。而妈妈们，也觉得相比于雇佣外面的保姆，自己母亲或者婆婆更值得信赖。家族主义在亚洲国家依然是非常重要的一种社会价值文化。但是，这篇文章补充了两个其他特征：双边家族主义以及传统社会性别角色的延续。双边家族主义是指，相比于在传统社会由男方家庭承担主要抚养孩子义务，当前双边老人都在参与这个过程。另外，传统男主外、女主内的性别角色通过隔代抚养的形式被保留了下来。男方母亲照顾第三代通常将此视作减轻儿子经济的压力，而女方母亲则是为了代替或者减轻自己女儿母职工作，从事使自己的女儿可以专心自己的事业。