Research Projects

Digital childcare platforms, on-demand labor platforms that connect caregivers and parents who need assistance, have become increasingly common in Korea in recent years. More precisely, a recent trend has been noted that the majority of these childcare gig workers are female college students. Believing that carework platforms go beyond merely digitizing childcare, this study aims to find the specific ways in which carework labor platforms have impacted the nature of carework itself, the agents of the platform—workers and clients—and existing gender inequality. I found three interesting findings through in-depth interviews with clients and childcare gig workers. First, I contend that since the gig economy attracted a new population of caregivers—female college students—these platforms unexpectedly introduced a new aspect to carework: private tutoring. Secondly, for the workers and clients of these platforms, who were predominantly female, gender norms significantly impacted the ways they interpreted their platform experiences. Lastly, I argue that, although the platform appeared to solve clients' childcare needs, it was simultaneously reinforcing the unequal distribution of care responsibilities between couples.

CHILDCARE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Through a Gender Lens: Understanding the Case of Platform-based Childcare Matching Services in Korea 

JIMIN GIM

Yonsei University, South Korea

Digital society, with its inherent promises of boundless opportunities, has witnessed the emergence of several platforms that utilize a market-driven and technology-driven approach to solving difficult social problems (Sundararajan, 2017). One of these platforms, commonly referred to as the childcare matching service platform (hereafter, childcare platform), asks the following question: “Isn’t it hard to raise kids?” Their advertised vision is to lift the burden of childcare from the shoulders of working parents by offering a digital service that matches college students who are willing to offer childcare services with busy parents who need the help.

Contrary to how the pre-existing paid care work sector hires professional caregivers, this service differs by presenting college students with relatively more free time as the main providers of the care service. This epitomizes the gig economy in that the parents (the clients) can acquire necessary care services through the mobile app, while college students (the workers) can acquire labor opportunities whenever they need them.

Both domestic and foreign childcare platforms, such as Care.com (United States) and Momsitter (South Korea), have shown significant growth despite a pandemic-induced financial slump (Lee, 2020; Zumbach, 2020). This is because demand for part-time, in-home caretakers (often known as babysitters) soared after daycare centers and kindergartens closed and outdoor activities were limited during the pandemic. Although childcare platforms are gradually increasing their presence, the topic of childcare platforms has rarely been discussed in academic research or in broader public discussions about online labor platforms, as most research has focused on delivery platforms (Milkman et al., 2021; Ticona, 2022; Ticona & Mateescu, 2018).

The aim of this study is to expand our understanding of digital society and care work by conducting a case study on the implications of digital childcare platforms. Granted, the care industry has long been governed by the logic of the market, with its services being sold and bought by economic agents. Even before digital transformation, the commodification of care work was underway, and research about paid care work has been well documented (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2004; England, 2005; England et al., 2002; Folbre & Nelson, 2000; Steinberg, 1990). However, I argue that the introduction of digitalized childcare platforms goes beyond merely migrating existing commercialized childcare to a digital platform. Based on in-depth interviews with workers and clients of digital childcare platforms, this research explores how digital childcare platforms impact (1) the nature of care work itself, (2) the agents of the platform (workers and clients), and (3) existing gender inequality.

Data and Methods

In this study, in-depth interviews with seventeen agents using the childcare platform—ten clients and seven childcare gig workers—were primarily utilized to investigate how care work platforms have influenced the nature of care work itself, the platform's agents, and existing gender inequalities. The client sample consisted of parents who had at least one preschool kid, had used one of three typical childcare platforms more than three times, and routinely sought daycare through the platforms. The workers had to be college students, have worked on the platform at least three times, or be currently employed as a caregiver.

I obtained interviews using two different sampling procedures. First, I reached out to interviewees by putting a recruitment advertisement on apps available to Seoul residents. I then recruited more participants using a restricted snowball sampling strategy that allowed only one reference per interviewee. All interviewees, both clients and childcare gig workers, were female. Seven of the ten clients were working mothers, indicating that their families are dual-earner households. All seven childcare gig workers were female college students.

I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with each, utilizing questionnaires that covered their purpose for using the site as well as their unique experiences. Questions for workers included the reason why they were self-selected for the sector, how they interpret their work experience, and what kind of difficulties they have while working. For clients, I asked about when they use the platform, what they expect from this platform, and the emotions they feel through using the platform. Each interview lasted around an hour, and the entire session was recorded with the approval of the study participants. All interviews were done in Korean and transcribed verbatim before being translated into English. To maintain confidentiality, each participant was assigned a pseudonym.

During my work as a childcare gig worker for the childcare platform, I also collected data from participant observations. These observations were carried out on four different occasions: April 26, May 24, June 7, and June 11. Each fieldwork lasted between two to three hours. The researcher cared for children of varying ages on two different occasions (May 24, and June 7), including a 4-year-old boy, a 5-year-old girl, and a 4-year-old girl, with the 5-year-old girl.

The observations were conducted primarily for questionnaires to use for in-depth interviews, rather than for direct answers to research questions. There was an emphasis on the data gathered through in-depth interviews due to the nature of individualized platform-based work, which made it difficult to observe other caregivers.

Findings

New Aspect of Childcare: Play or Private tutoring?

This section explores the new aspect of care work that arises in the context of digital childcare platforms. The discussion centers on what happens when care work and the gig economy intersect. The gig economy, characterized by autonomous and flexible work, transforms labor into a part-time, segmented form. Childcare, which has been closely associated with love, motherhood, and dedication, is no exception. This corresponds with the prior literature that the “on-demand” characteristics of the economy, such as incentivizing worker responsiveness and flexibility, have been embraced by care platforms (Ticona, 2018). Accordingly, in the Korean context, the workforce has also undergone noticeable changes. Contrary to how conventional full-time care work was considered to be the preserve of married middle-aged women, female college students who are generally far from traditional motherhood have flooded into the field of digitally mediated paid care work. This is closely related to the nature of platform-based labor, that “jobs are open to the majority, not to specific people” (The Presidential Committee on Jobs, 2020).

Clients (the parents) were observed to take full advantage of digitalized childcare platforms, finding college student babysitters whenever their labor was needed. While the college babysitters took care of the children, the parents would go out to manage backlogs or work from home with just a wall in between. It is even possible to find a babysitter three hours in advance through this platform. Such usage behavior is in accordance with the service promise to ease the burden on nurturers.

Meanwhile, such digitalized childcare platforms unexpectedly brought a new aspect to childcare: Care work began to resemble private tutoring. The new core demographic of the industry-college students aroused expectations for learning, although play activities did not concern any learning abilities. An example that illustrates such peculiarities well is “English Care.” This is positioned somewhere in between private tutoring and care work, whereby the parents, rather than expecting the babysitters to teach English in the form of private tutoring, ask care workers to “talk in English while playing badminton,” or to “communicate in English when putting together a puzzle.” While reminiscent of private tutoring, it eludes adequate compensation by emphasizing the play aspect. One college student interviewee working as a babysitter identified herself in the following way: “It’s more educational than a professional care worker, but it feels more intimate than a private tutor.”

In practice, the work of babysitters in digital childcare platforms differs from that of professional caregivers. In this sense, the care services provided by such platforms can be considered a supplement rather than a replacement for existing paid labor or the absence of the nurturer. This suggests that the introduction of a childcare platform may have imposed new responsibilities on the parents by adding one more type of care to be addressed rather than filling the existing care gap, contradictory to how services have put forward their public interest goals.

One college babysitter confessed a sense of bitterness about being treated like a private tutor. The questions of why college students chose to enter the field as caregivers and how they are interpreting their experience on childcare platforms comes to mind. The next section compares how the client and workers respectively interpret their experiences of using digital childcare platforms, analyzing their narratives through a gender lens.

Understanding the Experiences of Workers and Clients Through a Gender Lens

Analysis of the interviews shows there were various reasons why college students worked as babysitters in childcare platforms: because they like children; because it was a so-called “easy” part-time job; because they wanted to experience parenting as a woman who does not want to marry; because they wanted to help other women; and as practice for future parenting. Among many reasons, the common narrative was that it was “not just for money.” What they emphasized over monetary incentives were altruistic minds, solidarity, and, most of all, “that it could help mothers and families.”

Their accounts touch upon the frame of “providing care is a natural component of love that is unrelated to monetary values” which has long contributed to undervaluing care work (England, 2005; Folbre, 2001) and the perspective of “hostile worlds” (Zelizer, 2000). The logic of “more than money” also prevents them from actively demanding rights as laborers. College babysitters were hesitant to raise their voices about the problems they experienced, such as receiving small hourly wages compared to their labor intensity and not being compensated for writing “care notes.” This was because they felt guilty thinking of it as money-making labor. This demonstrates that the possibility of exploitation and undervalued labor that has been commonly seen in existing paid care sectors is being recreated, although it is being carried out by different agents (college students) in different contexts (platforms).

Meanwhile, another interesting finding was that the parents, who are the clients of the service, said they felt “less” guilty about the same care service experience. “Less” was a relative feeling compared to when using alternative care supports such as leaving the child to a full-time caregiver or receiving help from grandparents. One of the reasons the childcare platforms reduced feelings of guilt was that the workers were college students. Sunhee, who had utilized childcare services provided by full-time care workers, explains,

People who work as full-time caregivers often do it purely for financial reasons, however, college students act more as older brothers and sisters when they play with the children. I'm sure they applied because they love children.

Moreover, the parents emphasized the benefits of care work through platforms as it allows for a better use of time for children to spend doing more meaningful activities rather than being neglected. Gyungsin, one of the seven working mothers in my sample, compared her experiences by using the platform versus taking her daughters to her mother. She explains,

Honestly, my mother just lets my children watch TV while they could be spending quality time through Momsitter and Noldam (The Names of the Platforms). I'm very sorry to my children when I just let them waste time and leave them unattended. However, I feel less sorry when my children participate in platforms since there are many activities that they can enjoy and learn from.

Parents tended to understand the care service provided by digital childcare platforms as a form of parenting that goes beyond mere care work. The fact that she was providing quality time for her children with financial investment alleviated the guilt of being an “uncaring mother.” In other words, they were offsetting the guilt of violating the part of the intensive parenting norm that “a child should be taken care of by its mother” with the pursuit of another component of the norm that childcare needs to be child-centered, expert-oriented, emotionally absorbing, and financially expensive (Hays, 1998).

As was evident from the interviews, the interpretations of college babysitters and parents of their experiences in childcare platforms seem to be misaligned. However, one commonality was that their narratives were both gendered. First, underlying the expectations and bitterness of college students was love or altruism, closely associated with the gendered nature of childcare. In addition, the feminine ideal of the perfect parent myth governed the parents’ feelings about their experiences with childcare platforms. As such, gender accounted for their common identity—as women—and thus played an important role in interpreting their personal experiences. In the next section, the impact of digital childcare platforms on gender inequality will be examined.

Childcare platforms: the promised land for mothers and women?

Can childcare platform services, which appears to help to reduce the labor of childcare and the guilt of busy mothers, also alleviate the fact that the burden of childcare is unequally distributed to women? The following section contains an evaluation of how childcare platforms affect existing gender inequality.

The advertisement that a babysitter is just “a few clicks away” tends to blind people to the effort and concerns that inevitably precede the clicks. Recently, there has been a movement in academia to expand the conceptual range of childcare and household labor from the physical dimension to the cognitive dimension (Daminger, 2019, 2020). The primary difference between the physical dimension of childcare and the cognitive dimension of childcare lies in the fact that the former can be quantified in terms of labor hours while the same cannot be said for the latter, since it encompasses various cognitive endeavors, such as anticipating the need for labor, identifying feasible options, and monitoring the process of labor (Daminger, 2019, 2020). It could be argued from the perspective of this academic movement, that although daycare platforms do help alleviate the physical burdens of childcare for mothers, they simultaneously impose a new form of cognitive labor. For example, in order to utilize the services provided by the platform, one must first determine when and for what tasks one needs to hire a sitter and subsequently carefully select a sitter who appears to be trustworthy. Moreover, one must monitor the entire process of childcare. In other words, platforms can provide the role of a caretaker in emergent situations, but they fail to reduce the gross amount of burden in any solid sense.

It must also be noted that the mothers—the women—were always the family members who were responsible for executing the tasks associated with “clicking.” Dual-earner households exhibited little to no difference in this regard. However, interestingly, any concerns regarding this state of inequality were dismissed on the grounds that labor was being outsourced via digital platforms. A female clients considered that her family did not conform to traditional gender norms regarding childcare because her husband agreed to purchase daycare platform services:

We are not the type of family where mothers have to do all of the childcare, my husband actually tells me to use Momsitter (the name of the platform) more often.

This implies that technology in and of itself cannot resolve the unequal distribution of childcare labor within families, and that digital daycare platforms can not only mask the presence of inequalities that are deeply embedded within our society but also create an illusion that these problems have been addressed.

Beyond the gender inequality within the family, childcare platforms also offer implications for gender inequality in a wider context. In Korea, when a working mom needed a hand in childcare, it was often her mother—the grandmother—who took up the responsibility. Although this enabled women to stay in the workforce, the childcare labor itself was still tasked unequally to women, which served to reinforce gendered division of childcare labor (Lee & Bauer, 2013; Oh, 2018). In this context, the recent trend in which female university students are volunteering to become childcare laborers is interesting to observe. The emergence of digital platforms has merely decreased the average age of the childcare workforce, while traditional gender roles are continuously being recreated and reinforced.

Although there is no doubt that daycare platforms have been innovative, they have resolved neither the issue of unequal distribution of childcare responsibilities within families nor the social inequality in which women are deemed the primary caretakers of children. They have simply projected a false impression of order, of strengthened order, and of resolution.

DISCUSSION

Considering the complex ways that digital technology influences society, it is not easy to identify its impacts as either positive or negative. The emergence of childcare platforms has also brought multifaceted changes to society. While there were positive advantages of digital childcare platforms lessening the burden of childcare, negative aspects also existed in that the new form of labor added new responsibilities on the parents–usually the mother–and masked issues of inequality within the household.

Focusing on the new phenomenon following the introduction of digital childcare platforms, this article explored how they impacted carework itself, the individuals using the platform, and the society. What should be noted is that the problems of “invisible fathers in care work”, “predominance of women in paid carework sectors”, and “overheated private tutoring” pointed out in this article are not entirely new. These are deep-rooted problems within Korean society that have existed even before digital society. To identify the positive and negative implications of the digital society, it is important that more attention is given to the dynamics created when existing social problems are met with opportunities and risks brought about by the digital society.

In terms of future research on the childcare platform, I propose that further research should be undertaken in the following areas: First, it will be necessary to conduct future study about users’ experiences on the intersecting dynamics of gender and class. In this study, I argue that a digital childcare platform can be used as a tool for intensive parenting at home. We can assume that class-privileged women would be more inclined to embrace childcare platforms given that intensive parenting requires enough financial support and that the parenting culture of “concerted cultivation” (Lareau, 2003) is prevalent among the middle- and upper-middle classes.

In addition, it will be important to include the dimensions of class, race, and ethnicity to extend the conversation, given the complicated nature of the care work sector. While this study concentrated on the gendered nature of childcare, this industry is more convoluted because, from a global viewpoint, the workforce is primarily made up of immigrants and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2003; Parreñas, 2000; Pratt, 2003). In order to understand the connection between this female hierarchy (Parreñas, 2000) and the care work platform, it is critical to look beyond the Korean context, where racial and ethnic factors are not evident. For instance, Care.com, UrbanSitter, and Sittercity are just a few of the similar care work websites that are available in the United States. I hope that several studies utilizing an intersectional lens, particularly those including race and ethnicity, will be conducted soon in those contexts.