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Grandparents in babysitting business
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OCK Mi-eun, 57, has been taking care of her grandson since he was born two years ago so that her daughter could return to work. She receives 1 million won (US$830) a month for her services.
It is not unusual for South Koreans to pay their parents to take care of their children. But the number doing so is on the rise and the arrangement has become more professional-like as parents increasingly pay the equivalent of full babysitting rates.
“You’ve left your child with someone else, it’s only being responsible to pay some compensation,” said Ock, who picks up her grandson from his morning daycare and looks after him until his mother retrieves him in the evenings.
Childcare classes for the elderly, rare before 2013, have cropped up at public health centers. “They’re very eager to learn modern-day childcare because so much has changed from their time,” said Song Geum-re, who lectures at childcare classes for the elderly.
The trend is being driven by changes in South Korea’s population — the fastest aging in the world. A record share of women work and a high rate of poverty among the elderly means many older people need the income.
Even though government data shows almost 53 percent of women work, that level is low compared with other member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
New mothers are often deterred from returning to work by a lack of day care, where demand far outstrips available places.
The share of families whose children were looked after by grandparents rose to 35.1 percent in 2012, the last year for which government data is available, from 31.9 percent in 2009.
A survey by the Gyeonggido Family and Women’s Research Institute in 2011 showed nearly 80 percent of 300 grandparents who regularly took care of their grandchildren were paid.
Suh Moon-hee, a visiting research fellow at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, said paying grandparents for childcare is not new but there now seems a more professional arrangement.
“In the past, if South Koreans paid a third of what they would have paid babysitters because they regularly gave their parents financial support. Now they pay them full wages,” she said.
“It’s more of a transaction for services.”
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