“Annyeoung!”
A couple of months ago I tried to teach myself Korean. After all, I was interested in the entertainment and culture of South Korea, and wanted to visit one day in the future. I have a friend from South Korea who was happy to help me out when I needed it—even when I stumbled over a simple word like “hello.” I was unabashedly obsessed with her culture. And for the short time that I’ve known her, she’s made quite an impression on me.
We’ve discussed many things about South Korea and life in general; not only language and culture, but also what we thought of relationships and having children. Our discussions gave me a new insight and interest into the politics and growing trends of South Korea. My friend herself is not quite sure about parenthood, having reservations about having children.
“I’ve been thinking that I might be selfish enough to not give my full attention or effort for [children]. I’ve been saying, ‘I don’t like kids, I don’t know why, maybe I’m so selfish, I might not be a suitable person’- and almost everyone says ‘you’ll change once you get your own child.’” She added that also because she was one of the youngest in her family, she’s never had much interaction with children. Her sister, however, was great with kids, and interacted with them a lot at family gatherings, while my friend preferred to sit in the corner reading a book.
In South Korea, a lot of pressure is put on young people to live up to the ideal of being perfect parents. “This might not be the case for my parents, but generally Korean parents expect a lot of things for their children. Nobody wants their kids to have less than other kids.” My friend says that childrearing in South Korea is very competitive, with parents paying a lot of money for education and other advantages. Korea’s highly competitive and expensive educational system is off-putting to some people, however, making them rethink having children.
And many people are rethinking — South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, at an average of 1.17 children per woman. This is less than the 2.1 children that is required to maintain a population. The government has been alarmed by this enough that it is giving money to people if they have more children.
My friend discussed the issue with other South Koreans and many of them thought they would someday become parents. But in other areas of their lives, they are breaking away from old traditions. Many of them feel that marriage isn’t a mandatory part of parenthood, particularly if a woman can support herself. Also, many younger people marry later in life, spending their 20s pursuing careers and education. As in the United States, women who marry later in life and continue to pursue their educations often have fewer children than those who did not.
One thing is certain about the similarities between the United States and South Korea, not everyone really questions whether or not to have children.
“I think some people ‘just’ have kids without much thinking, because that’s what other people usually do: getting married and having kids.” My friend added that people who don’t have children probably put more thought into it than their parental counterparts. With high pressure to conform coming from family and the government, she admits that sometimes it does feel it would be easier to do what is expected.
Copyright . Published 1 December 2007 in Features.
Reader comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
It’s nice to hear about other childfree people or “fence-sitters” from around the world, esp. as I am living in a country that is not my home country and married to an Egyptian Muslim and we are childfree! So it’s nice to hear about this, thank you for sharing! P.S. all the best with learning Korean, good on you!
I too love languages and hope to learn some in the future.
permalink — 2 December 2007, 10:46