Childless men living in Seoul are more willing to become a parent in 2024 compared to 2023, but their female counterparts' inclination to have a child grew at a slower rate in the same period, a survey by a government-run institute showed Sunday.
The Seoul Family Center — affiliated with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the Korea Institute for Healthy Family, and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family — released a report based on their July 2024 survey on 884 childless individuals aged between 20-49 on their perception of family. The respondents were asked to give a score of 1 to 5 on their intention to become a parent.
The average score for men was 3.7, up from 3.5 in the same survey in 2023, and also from 3.3 in both the 2022 and 2021 surveys. The female scores, however, stayed at 3.0 in both the 2023 and 2024 surveys, although it had increased from the 2.7 in both 2021 and 2022.
Researchers asked a follow-up question of why they did not want to be parents, only to respondents who gave scores of under 3 points. Both of the most popular answers were related to the child’s upbringing.
The top answers for both genders was "I'm not sure I can raise a child as well as I want to" — 4.3 for women and 3.9 for men. The second-highest answer, "the Korean society is not an ideal place to raise a child," got 4.1 scores from women and 3.6 scores for men.
"It appears that the (results) reflect a traditional gender role that women are the primary caretaker for a child. ... Both the pressure of becoming the primary caretaker and the Korean society that is not friendly to childcare is why women do not want to become a parent," the researchers noted, saying this perception must be changed to address the chronic low fertility issue the country has been struggling with for years.
Record-low birthrates have been ailing South Korea for years, with the nation's total fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have for her lifetime — recording 0.72 in 2023 to mark dead-last among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Both the total fertility rate and the number of babies rose for the first time in nine years in 2024, each recording 0.75 and 238,300. But the total fertility rate still is the lowest in the OECD, and is about half of the OECD average of 1.5 (2022 figure).
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
