여성의 노부모 보살핌 경험에 관한 연구

Abstract

This paper starts from the question, how the women who offered care labor for their aged parents interpret and give meaning to their experiences. The elderly care in Korean family has been regarded as the gender role embedded in the cultural context of the Confucian filial duty and thus the government has ignored the issue in the public sphere. But the recent increase of the aged people and working women and the visualization of elder abuse stimulated the necessity of the institutionalization of elderly care. Nevertheless, the family and especially women are not free from the responsibility for the elders. This research inquires into the women’s experiences through the in-depth interviews with the women who cared for elderly parents as daughters or as daughters-in-law. The interviewees were 10 people living in Seoul. Each participant had two or three interviews, for one or two hours per each interview. Their ages are various from the forties to the seventies. The reason why there was no age restriction on interviewees was because this research was interested in any possible change resulting from age difference in the care of elderly parents. According to the result of the research, daughters-in-law's responsibility for parents-in-law in the paternal family tends to have lessened relatively compared with the past. Nevertheless,they still feel that they are responsible for the care of the parents-in-law. Meanwhile, the research shows that the daughters who live with their elderly parents or have intimate relationship with them care for them from their own hearts. Nonetheless, the care for elderly parents was physically, mentally, and emotionally hard work. Women quit the job and experienced the cutting of the career because of the care for elderly parents. Even though women played the multiple roles such as housewives and mothers, their husbands did not support them. Since the elderly care is regarded as the troublesome, odd jobs, and the gendered role, women’s self-esteem was depreciated. Meanwhile, women understood the fact that aging and dying is the course of life through their care for their parents and accepted their time with elderly parents as the precious opportunity to feel empathy with them. The value of elderly care has been ignored in the feminist discourses. But the revaluation of elderly care services will be helpful as women's issue. Despite the institutionalization of elderly care, women's care for elderly parents does not decrease due to distrust of institution and the prejudice that the care of elderly parents are women's job. The idea that the care for elderly parents within family boundary is filial duty fixes women's role and hampers the institutionalization of elderly care. In order not to alienate Women's care for elderly parents, society should encourage men's participation and their emotional and physical support for elderly care. The institutionalization of elderly care in the public sphere should also reduce the economic burden and support the reliable elderly care.