These days, we can find the story about unmarried mothers easily through the various media. As contrasted with the past when we tried to hide the theme of unmarried mothers, the topic of unmarried mothers began to be dealt with as the themes of movies and dramas. As shown in the movie “Speed Scandal,” released not long ago, unmarried mothers at present are imposing and the view toward them is not dark compared with the past. The view of the media isn’t the only change. Actually, the situations that unmarried mothers face and the number of them are changing.
Recent statistical materials within the past five years said that the number of occurrences of unmarried mothers increased from five people to six per a day. The most serious problem is that unmarried mothers under the age of 15 increased about 43 percent. Over 84 percent of the unmarried mothers who are in the institution for unmarried moms are women between 16 years old and 25 years old. By means of this fact, we can perceive how serious the problem is of domestic unmarried mothers of school age.
In every age group, the number of unmarried mothers is increasing, and there are some representative reasons for its increase.
At first, there is a destruction of the view of ethics and an alteration of the social atmosphere towards sex. In the past, Korea was conservative about sex because of the Confucian ideas. However, the industry of enjoyment became prosperous, and many people had contact with Western cultures that had open sex cultures, and it caused a change of young people’s attitudes toward sex. Furthermore, the variation of attitude formed the trend of dinner without grace.
Next, the attitude towards sex is also dependent on their relatons with their peers. Youths spend time with their friends more than with their teachers or parents. Therefore, they acquire information about sex from their friends. In this process, it is easy to acquire wrong and imprudent information. Their attitude toward sex can be distorted if they get wrong education about sex.
Recently, the social atmosphere and attitude toward sex are changing rapidly. However, the education necessary to correct the atmosphere and lead to the right direction can’t catch up with the speed. Therefore, problems like the increase of unmarried mothers are caused. Efforts to grasp the reason of these problems and to remedy them are required.