Living as a Member of Single-Mother Families in Korea

To become a single parent family in Korea will be a single parent family, but for a variety of reasons such as widows, separate living, divorce, abandonment, prohibition of marriage, women can become a family. Although divorced and non-married births are the single main means (Weinraub et al., 2002), the widow and divorce are the main reasons Korean women in the past 10 years (Yang, 2004). In particular, the number of divorced single mothers has increased rapidly over the past decade (Kong, 2000).

Redefining single mothers Single mothers face serious economic challenges. This may account for an increase in the number of single mothers living with their civilians, parents, or other relatives. In single parent families, alternative and flexible living arrangements - adaptive response to economic difficulties seem to be increasingly adopted. These new life arrangements redefine the meaning of living in a single parent household. Changes in family composition also pose questions about the income and poverty measurement methods of a single parent household. For example, public poverty alleviation is increasingly recognized as being inappropriate, as it does not consider income contributions of unmarried partners or other (unrelated) families.

Poverty of a single parent family Most single parent families have limited financial resources to satisfy their children's education, child care, and medical expenses. Seven out of ten children living with a single mother are poverty or low income, less than a third (32%) of children living with other types of families. Part of the problem is that there is little potential income of household heads where women are heads of households, but as many fathers have disadvantages because of the lack of fathers to collect childcare expenses. In 2007, only 31% of female household headhouses who have children report that they received parenting support in the previous year. In this case, unmarried young mothers are particularly difficult to receive childcare support, as many fathers have very low wages.