Abstract
This study surveys 260 working mothers about guilt feeling in mothers, family function, and social support networks during their childrearing years. The study focuses on how social support networks for two-income parents differ from and a...
Abstract
This study surveys 260 working mothers about guilt feeling in mothers, family function, and social support networks during their childrearing years. The study focuses on how social support networks for two-income parents differ from and are affected by relationships between guilt feeling and family function and by general characteristics of working mothers. The surveyors are working mothers in Jinju, Kyung-Nam whose children, aged ten or younger, attend preschools, kindergartens, after school programs of elementary schools, local childcare schools, and private educational institutes. Using SPSS version 12.0, we perform confidence analysis, frequency analysis, dispersion analysis, analysis of variance, independent samples t-test, and correlation and regression analysis. The major results are summarized as follows: in terms of guilt feeling and family function, according to the population and social characteristics of surveyors, age relates to guilt feeling and its element, guilt feeling for failures in parental roles; academic career relates to family function and its elements, family cohesion and family flexibility; household income relates to an element of guilt feeling, guilt feeling for failures in parental roles and elements of family function, family cohesion and family flexibility; ages of children relate to guilt feeling and an element of family function, family cohesion (ages of two or younger and five to seven); and job relates to family function and its element, family cohesion. For low and high guilt groups, there is a statistically significant relationship between family function and its elements, family cohesion. Among guilt feeling, family function, and social support networks, there appears significant relationship between family function and social support networks. Guilt feeling relates to the following elements of family function and social support networks: babysitting and child caring by others, parental roles and child caring, family flexibility and family cohesion (family function); and local child care centers and local social welfare facilities (social support networks). In particular, guilt feeling highly relates to local child care centers and local social welfare facilities. Significant relationships are found between: parental roles and child caring by others; relatives and family cohesion; relatives and family flexibility; co-workers and family cohesion; co-workers and family flexibility; co-workers and relatives. The professional facilities have relationships with family flexibility, co-workers, and local social welfare facilities. The local child care centers and local social welfare facilities also have relationships with co-workers, family cohesion, and relatives. There are negative relationships between: family cohesion and parental roles, family flexibility and parental roles, and local child care centers and relatives. Taking into account the elements of social support networks, it is shown that family function is significantly affected by relatives and co-workers, but not significantly affected by local child care centers, local social welfare facilities, and professional organiza- tions. The results show working mothers feel guilty for not catering more to the needs of their children, by not providing excellent education to their children, or by struggling to fulfill the role of the good mothers.