Year of Publication
2022
College
Martin School of Public Policy and Administration
Date Available
6-17-2022
Degree Name
Master of Public Administration
Committee Chair
Dr. Jeongyoon Lee
Executive Summary
This research aims to analyze the effect of the time spent with children and the degree of communication with children on the difficulties of parenting children by single parents in Korea. As for the single parents' parenting difficulties, economic hardships have been widely discussed. However, not many studies examined other psychosocial factors between single parents and children, such as the problem of communication between parents and children and the lack of time spent with parents and children, despite their importance in parenting children. This study claims that the focus of public policies, governmental support, and non-profit organizations' roles to resolve the parenting difficulties faced by single parents needs to be changed and diversified toward addressing psychosocial factors. The data used for the analysis is the 2018 Single-parent Family Survey conducted by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, where 949 single-parent families with children aged 7 to 12 and 1,535 single-parent children aged 13 to 17 responded. The OLS regression analyses show several findings regarding the association between psychosocial factors and parenting challenges. First, the more difficult it is for single parents to communicate with children, the more difficult it is to raise children. Second, the more time single parents spend with their children, the less difficult it is to raise them. Third, when single parents are female, the greater the number of children, the more difficult it is to raise children. However, the age of single parents, the educational background of single parents, the period of becoming single parents, household income, and net assets do not significantly affect the stress of single parents' childrearing. The research results highlight the importance of parents of single-parent family communicating with their children and securing time spend with their children in supporting single-parent families.
Recommended Citation
Park, Ki Jeong, "Effect of Communication and Time Spent with Children on the Parenting Difficulties of Single Parents in Korea" (2022). MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects. 341.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/mpampp_etds/341
