RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: This study is focused on providing baseline data to help and guide unmarried mothers throughout their pregnancy and delivery. METHODS: We surveyed 165 unmarried mothers who gave birth from January, 2003 to December, 2006 at Seoul Red Cross Hospital. They were divided into three age groups; 10's group, 20's group, and 30's to 40's group, and obstetric and social aspects of each group was analyzed with Chi-square test (x2), ANOVA, using SPSS (Ver. 10.0) verified with 95% of significance level. RESULTS: In this study, 61.1% of all unmarried mothers were in their 20's. Unmarried mothers were examined on the average 3.88 times before giving birth and 53.3% of them recognized their pregnancy before 3 months gestation. Unmarried mothers depend upon, mass communication such as the internet for medical information. Cesarean section rate was 21.8%, and the older the unmarried mothers are, the higher it gets. 22.2% of unmarried mothers have a higher education background; presently college students or above. Their smoking rate was 53.3%, which means more than half of them have smoked. 70.3% of the mothers in the survey wanted their children to be adopted after delivery. CONCLUSION: In this time of lowering birth rates, we should reconsider today's fragmentary welfare policies which only provide financial aid for delivery. It is necessary to provide welfare services which can cover delivery and rearing as well, so unmarried mothers choose to bring up their own children instead of sending the children off for adoption.