• 한국사회정책
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.97-115
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• 2017

Unlike the past several decades when over 90% of unwed mothers chose to adopt their children, the number of never-married mothers who determine to raise their children for themselves has recently been increasing. However, many unwed mothers are still suffering from a diversity of problems including poverty, discrimination and biased stereotypes. To this end, this study aims to observe the development process of social policy for unwed mothers in Korea, with a special focus on the policy paradigm shift, and examine current social services for never-married mothers and their children. The results of the study shows the paradigm shift of social policy for unwed mothers occurred around the mid-2000's towards helping never-married mothers rear their children. However, social services for them have not kept pace with the paradigm change, which makes still very much hard for unwed mothers to raise their kids on their own. The study concludes with policy implications for improving social services for families headed by never-married mothers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Child Welfare
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• no.53
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• pp.1-23
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• 2016

With using a subsample of 1,373 poor single mothers and their children from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, the present study examined the associations among mothers' economic hardship, depressive symptoms, and parenting stress, child abuse and neglect, and their children's behavior problems, delinquency, and social skill. These families were tracked through follow-up interviews at the time of birth, and when the children were three, five, and nine years old. The results indicated that mothers' economic hardship, depressive symptoms, and parenting stress were significant predictors to determine their children's abuse and neglect. Findings also suggest that higher levels of child abuse and neglect are positively associated with more behavior problems and delinquency, and negatively associated with social skills. Further discussions include policy and services to prevent child abuse and neglect and to alleviate mothers' financial difficulties, depression, and parenting stress.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.492-501
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• 2021

This study was undertaken to identify the perception and sexual attitude of nursing students and obstetrics and pediatric nurses towards unwed mothers, and to identify differences in the general characteristics. Data were collected as a self-reported questionnaire survey from September, 2018 to January, 2019. Subjects included 94 nursing students enrolled at 2 nursing colleges, and 101 nurses of 8 hospitals located in the B & C Metropolitan. The data collected was analyzed by descriptive statistics, frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, independent t-test, and one-way ANOVA. Comparing results obtained from nursing students and nurses revealed a statistically significant difference in their overall perception of an unwed mother and sexual attitude. The perception of an unwed mother showed significant differences considering the grade, age and sibling status of nursing students, whereas nurses revealed significantly different perceptions according to their age, occupational position, clinical career, career of current work department, marital status, and children status. Sexual attitude was significantly different for nursing students according to their experience contact with unwed mother, whereas perception of nurses differed significantly for sexual attitude according to experience contact with unwed mother, types of hospital, and marital status. We propose that data obtained from this research can be used as basic data for research and education related to the perception of unwed mothers and sexual attitude of nursing students and nurses.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.337-346
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• 1997

To know the characteristics of the unmarried mother. We need to investigate what kind of circumstances the unmarried mother comes from and under which conditions created her situation. This investigation's purpose is to provide general information on how to prevent this situation. There are many unmarried mothers registered in support groups for single mothers in A City. We surveyed 67 single mothers registered from Nov. 1 '96 - April 30 '97. The questions of the survey asked for general characteristics, family background, friendship, attitude and knowledge toward sex and the relationship with the baby's father. We analysed this research data into a percentages.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.61-87
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• 2004

In Korea, since the systematic efforts to help unmarried mothers are rather limited, the unmarried mother's social relationship is expected to play a critical role in the adjustment of unmarried mothers after the birth of a baby. The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of social relationship on unmarried mother's self-esteem. Especially, this study focused a negative aspect of social relationship, social conflict, which has been ignored by the previous researches. For this study, survey method was employed. The respondents of the questionnaire were 205 unmarried mothers staying at six out of eight institutions for unmarried mothers available in Korea. The multiple regression and other descriptive statistical methods were conducted and the results of analysis are as follows. First, the higher the level of perceived social support was, the higher the level of self-esteem of unmarried mothers was. Second, the higher the level of perceived social conflict was, the lower the level of self-esteem of unmarried mothers was. Third, even though the level of perceived social conflict was much lower than the perceived social support, the effect of social conflict on unmarried mothers' self-esteem was as powerful as the social support. This means that the effect of social conflict also can be very important. These findings suggest a new direction for intervention for unmarried mothers. Until now, the major target of intervention in social relationship was to strengthen existing social support or establish new social support system. Now, in addition to augmenting social support, we should pay attention to removal of social conflict, since it has significantly powerful effect on the adjustment of unmarried mothers.

• Proceedings of KHEA Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.186-186
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• 2004

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.149-169
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• 2002

The focus of this research was to understand the socio-demographic characteristics, pregnancy conditions, social support, and future plan of teenage unwed mothers in Korea. Among the unwed mother, the teenage group was a higher percentage (53.7%) than the over-twenties group (46.3%). In the distribution of teenage unwed mothers, the major part, 94.6%, was in the 16- to 17- year-old age range, and 5.4% were under 15 years of age. This indicates that the age of unwed mothers is getting lower. Most teenage unwed mothers were from intact(72.3%) and/or low-class(62.3%) families. A significant percentage (37.7%)was from middle- and upper-middle class families, signifying that teenage pregnancy is not a problem only of disadvantaged and lower class families. The education of one-third of the teenage unwed mothers in this study was only up to first year of middle school(7th grade), indicating that pregnancy may be a reason they dropped out of school.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.36
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• pp.203-225
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to examine how much the external locus of control, social support, self-esteem, and adoption decision making process influence to teen parents' grief and find out the differences depending on meeting the baby, breast-feeding, anticipating the meeting the baby, ceremony for separation, and exposing their grief by themself or to others. Data was analysed with multiple regression and t-test. With the result of multiple regression analysis, the higher external locus of control, pressure of birthfather, regrets for adoption decision are, the higher grief is, and the lower support of friends and self-esteem are, the higher grief is. And It is estimated high grief statically among the group of breast-feeding, anticipating the baby, no ceremony for separation. But the group exposing their grief by self or to others felt low grief. On the basis of the results, we will find out the meaningful contents for intervention. The staffs of birthmother shelter and social worker don't overlooking the relationship between birthmother and birthfather and enforce the internal locus of control, self-esteem. Above all we will intervene about exploring the adoption decision making and facilitate the exposure of feeling related to surrendered baby(guilt, anxiety, sadness, shame, fear).

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.1-18
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• 2012

This study investigated the mate selection preferences of single female teachers by investigating the desired traits in socioeconomic, physical attractions, psychological traits and family roles of their prospected marital partner, in order to explore the current trends in homogamous marriage. A questionnaire was distributed to 295 unmarried female teachers selected by convenience sampling from the various cities. The teachers pursued homogeneity in age, educational attainment, religion, and occupation while they preferred partners with higher income level. In terms of physical assets, the attraction that the teachers felt towards the partner was the most important physical appearances. The respondents preferred partners who are masculine and an androgynous partner. The teachers held high expectations towards their future spouses in that they desired to share the roles of emotional, financial support, child care and kin keeping. A partner who shared modern sex role attitudes was preferred over someone who held traditional one. The pursuit for overall homogeneity reflects that the teachers seek for equality in their relationships with prospected marital partners by exchanging similar characteristic.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.65 no.2
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• pp.131-154
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• 2013

Although fatalities due to child abuse are frequently happened, there has been a dearth of research on the topic. The present research analyzes deaths due to child abuse in representative newspapers in order to examine incidences, causes, and characteristics of child abuse. The results showed that from 2000 to 2012 child abuse deaths occurred 141 cases. Most deaths due to child abuse were committed by single mothers, biological mothers, cohabiting women and stepmothers, and biological fathers. As regards the reasons of deaths due to child abuse, the frequency of newborn infant deaths as the result of abuse by single mother or single parent was the highest, and lack of parenting skills, postpartum depression, hardships of living and lack of financial abilities were followed. Also, subjects received extensive media coverage were crime compositions-stereotypes of child abusers, habitual and continual child abuse, lack of child abuse reporting and prevention system, and mild penalties. Finally, based on the results of the study, the implications to prevent and resolve deaths due to child abuse were discussed.