영유아의 생활시간조사

Abstract

The present study aims to understand basic daily routines and environmental factors that affect infants and young children's development by investigating their time diary in order to provide basic information necessary for infant and early childhood care, education and parent education. Time Diaries were collected from records of how the children spent their weekdays and weekends, then the differences in the overall hours daily routines and the hours spent on each behavioral domains were calculated and finally the company while participating in a domain and the rate of togetherness was examined. Activity hours by age were analyzed to understand the characteristics of activities of children at each age. Lastly, children's working hours were analyzed by the mother's child rearing behaviors, employment status, and children’s sex. To carry out this study, foreign and national literature were reviewed along with conducting surveys and consulting meetings with field experts. The subjects were five hundred infants and young children (boys 51.2%, girls 48.8%) aged between 1 and 4 (Age 1 25.6%, age 2 26.6%, age 3 23.6%, and age 4 24.2%) residing in Seoul, Gyeonggi and Incheon regions. The mothers or the main carer were surveyed to collect information on the children. The results are as follows. The average daily activity hours of age 1 to 4 children were 14 hours 50 minutes for personal maintenance, 4 hours and 44 minutes for socializing and playing activities, 3 hours and 8 minutes for surrogate care, 1 hour and 4 minutes for travelling, 10 minutes for learning, and 1 minute for helping household chores. Specifically, sleeping hours of age 1 children were 12 hours and 20 minutes, 11 hours and 49 minutes for age 2 children, 11 hours 32 minutes for age 3 children, and 11 hours 29 minutes for 4 year olds. Time spent on learning with workbooks were 2 minutes for 2 year olds, 5 minutes for 3 and 4 year olds. Hours of surrogate caring were 3 hours 40 minutes for 4 year olds being the longest, 3 hours and 28 minutes for 3 year olds, and 2 hours 15 minutes for 1 year olds. On the other hand, 1 year olds spent the most time of 5 hours 3 minutes on social interaction and play, 4 hours 41 minutes and 4 hours 40 minutes for 2 and 3 year olds, respectively. Children spent 61.9% of the time alone, and their most common company was their mother (18.9%) then the fathers (13.1%) followed by teachers (11.5%) and siblings (11.1%). These policy suggested were made based on these results. First of all, in order to develop healthy basic habits, children need to improve their sleep patterns with early intervention. Also, because long-hour use of media from infancy may have negative effects, parent education on infants' use of media should be provided and support parents to enable their children to experience active playing. Secondly, a set of standards for age appropriate basic habits such as sleeping hours, media use hours, learning methods should be developed to encourage children to develop a life-long inquisitive mind. Thirdly, public promotion of information on healthy habits should be implemented. In other words, media and public promotion of information on instructing children to develop basic habits and public education on the importance of slpending more time with family may be practiced.