[Column] Disappearing Traditional Families and the Framework Act on Healthy Families

On May 30, the last holiday of the month, a family visiting the Seoul Sky observatory at Lotte World Tower in Songpa-gu, Seoul, is looking out over the cityscape of Seoul. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

The concept of ‘family’ as a group based on blood relations and marriage is gradually disappearing. Single-person households account for 30.4% of all households, rapidly catching up to the traditional family structure of couples with unmarried children, which stands at 31.7%. Reflecting this trend, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is pushing for a revision of the law to remove the definition of family in the ‘Framework Act on Healthy Families,’ which currently defines family as “the basic unit of society formed through marriage, blood relations, or adoption.”

Values regarding family have already changed. According to the ‘2020 Family Survey’ recently released by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, compared to the 2015 survey five years earlier, the percentage agreeing with singlehood without marriage increased from 32.4% to 34.0%, cohabitation without marriage from 21.1% to 26.0%, and childlessness from 21.3% to 28.3%. Notably, among people in their 20s, half agreed with singlehood without marriage (53%), cohabitation without marriage (46.6%), and childlessness (52.5%). This suggests that the proportion of families composed of couples and unmarried children is expected to decline even faster over the next decade.

However, members of the National Assembly’s Gender Equality and Family Committee from both ruling and opposition parties have been suffering from ‘text message bombings’ for several months. They are demanding an immediate halt to the bill, claiming that the revision is a preliminary step toward legalizing same-sex marriage. A staff member from a ruling party lawmaker’s office lamented, “The backlash is severe, including protest calls, text messages, and rallies, and since the opposition party is also negative about the discussion, we are at a point where we cannot even hold a subcommittee meeting to review the bill.”

The purpose of the law revision is to protect those who are excluded from family policy support due to the outdated framework of the ‘normal family.’ It aims to legally protect ‘sikgu (食口),’ those who can be relied upon more than blood relations, and is not related to permitting same-sex marriage. The diversity of family structures will change even faster in the future. The legal definition of family will inevitably remain as an ‘old-fashioned’ concept. Laws and systems always lag behind changing values. It is time to start preparing to accept various forms of families. The violence of stigmatizing those who deviate from traditional standards as ‘abnormal’ must disappear as soon as possible.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.