본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

A Public Theological Ethical Approach to Work-Life Balance of Babyboomers: From a Perspective of the Balance between Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa

이상훈 1

1새세대 고령화연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to come up with a public theological approach to work-life balance for Korean baby boomers(1955 to 1963 birth cohorts) from an integrated or perspective of vita activa and vita contemplativa. Many Korean baby boomers are not financially prepared for retirement because they have been held responsible to care for their children longer than they planned, as well as now also believed to assume the role of caretaker for their elderly parents. They are often considered sandwiched between aging parents who need care and/or help and their own children in their twenties to thirties who are not economically independent. It can be assumed that many boomers living in this sandwiched generation continue to experience economic insecurity and have to work past the official retirement age. Though in need of urgent reemployment, they have difficulties in returning to the active labor force than younger workers amid persistent challenges such as ageism or age discrimination and high unemployment. Unfavorable labor market conditions may compel baby boomers who need to be reemployed to support themselves economically often to engage in dehumanizing labor and let them fall into the category of what is defined as animal laborans. It is in this context that work-life balance practices are introduced to support the efforts of employees to split their time and energy between work and the other important aspects of their lives. This study seeks to develop and offer an appropriate understanding of work-life balance by drawing on a pneumatological harmony of vita activa and vita contemplativa. It will reveals that there is no need of inherent conflict and dichotomy in a dualistic thinking between work and life in cluding leisure, worship, and rest; rather they are mutually complementary. This holistic perception of work and life relationship can be adequately dealt with and persuasively formulated in a pneumatological theology of work reinterpreted from a public theological perspective.

Statistics

  • 541 Viewed
  • 280 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
Basic Search Advanced Search