The Grand Narrative

Interested in childcare issues in Korea, a couple of weeks ago I linked to an article in the Economist about inadequate childcare facilities in the Netherlands for comparison. That article made a direct link between that and the fact that the majority of women there are doing part-time work, and that the Netherlands has one of the highest pay gaps and lowest shares of women in top managerial and professional jobs in the EU. Today, I read this reply to it over my morning coffee:

The work-life balance

SIR – It is interesting to note the relatively low participation of Dutch women in full-time work (“Tied to the kitchen”, September 8th). Yet your inference that “maternal guilt” needs to be “cured” in the Netherlands is at odds with other observations that Dutch teenagers appear to be the best adjusted and happiest, have a lower rate of self-harm, and are the fittest and healthiest compared with their peers in other countries. The Dutch also have relatively far fewer people in jail. I wonder if there is any relationship? And who has the balance right?

Alex Willink

Melbourne, Australia

And this one too:

SIR – An explanation of Dutch women being less likely to be full-time working mothers may be provided in the book you reviewed earlier on the millions of single women after the first world war (“Send them to the colonies”, September 1st). As the Netherlands remained neutral during the war, it did not suffer the same losses of men that other countries in Europe did. As a result, it was easier to keep mothers caught in the tradition of kitchen, kids and cakes, rather than to encourage them to work in order to plug gaps in the labour market.

Nanke Meuter-Dikkers

The Hague

The book mentioned in the second lesson looks very interesting, but the first letter in particular stuck my eye, as the same could easily be said of Korean teenagers, and a link made between this and Korean women’s tendency to stay at home once they have children. Lest I give the wrong impression however, before I go on I should point out that I have never actually explicitly heard of a single Korean person make the above link, so my issues with it may be seem a bit misplaced. But then it’s not an unreasonable assumption to make, as having studious and relatively well-behaved teenagers is not something one tends to keep a secret from to foreigners after all, and similar explanations for it have already been provided in the misguided “Asian Values” debates of the 1990s. So, I’m 99% certain that if I threw a stone out of my apartment window I could hit plenty of passersby that would make the link, and as my Korean improves I’m making sure to discuss with Koreans about what I write on the blog and get their feedback as much as possible (I will report on my Korean tutor’s thoughts on childcare in Korea from yesterday soon), and so I fully expect to find that many Koreans share such sentiments. Having said all that, I think it’s all complete BS, at least in the Korean case.

As Michael Hurt says, albeit for a completely different subject, to use this case of the Netherlands to buttress the argument that stay at home mothers means healthy and happier teenagers in Korea would be to “present foreign knowledge out of it’s cultural context.” I’d be the first to admit that Korean teenagers are well adjusted and happy in the sense that they rates of youth crime and teenage pregnancy are extremely low by Anglo-Saxon or even Southern European standards, for instance, and I’ve also mentioned that circumstances dictate that they tend to be extremely considerate and unselfish towards their peers. I’d also agree that in terms of waist sizes they are certainly fitter and healthier…but these alone are about the only pluses Korean teenagers have over their Western counterparts. But none of them can be directly attributed to their mothers staying at home; rather, they are all probably much more the result of the after-school institute system.

In the case of the latter for instance, it is not at all because Korean teenagers are going home and having wholesome home-cooked meals made by their mothers, nor is it even because Korean food is so cheap and healthy, but is in fact because with all the after-school institutes that they have to go to they barely have time to eat at all, and when they do their parents normally don’t normally give them enough money for anything other than 라면 or instant noodles (which I can not understand why more Koreans do not consider junk food). And fit? Not that Western teenagers get enough physical education either, but then at least they get more than 4-6 hours sleep a night. I’d much rather try to win a race against Korean teenagers, not because they are shorter, which basically isn’t true at all anymore, but because they have such big bags under their eyes that they can barely see straight, let alone be fit enough to run.

As for statistical indicators of “happiness and being well-adjusted,” well, I’d say that even the low crime and teenage pregnancy numbers are not due to Korean mothers per se, as teenagers can’t be outside having fun commit crimes and/or become pregnant because most of them are trying to sleep studying in institute classes from straight after school until very late at night. And happy? Korea has one of the highest suicide rates for young people in the OECD, many of whom are teenagers jumping from their apartment balconies after test time. Make no mistake about it, Korea is simply hell for most Koreans in their mid to late-teens, and their seeming acceptance of it is from having little choice in the matter and not knowing anything else. Like I’ve explained earlier, it can take a lot of convincing them that when I was the same age I came home everyday, occasionally did homework for an hour or so, and then played chess chased girls for the remainder of the evening. To them, it sounds too bizarre to be true, or at best grossly exaggerated.

It can be very easy to present mothers staying at home in Korea (or the Netherlands or Southern Europe for that matter) as some sort of unwritten pact with the state, their lack of economic freedom justified for the benefits to their children. Indeed, the Economist has on many occasions argued that the economic and martial emancipation of women in Western countries was and is at the expense of children, and this is certainly true. I’m not denying for a moment that it is more beneficial to children for their parents to raise them personally, or that this is somehow less worthy than paid work to do; indeed, my wife stays at home for the sake of my daughter, and with my short work hours a post of this length means I’ll have had my sleeping daughter draped over my shoulder for much of it (which explains the quality). But to link children’s wellbeing with a denial of those opportunities to women is an after the fact justification for the preexisting denial of those opportunities for other, patriarchal and sexist reasons. After all, if I had to sum up the current state of Korea society in one sentence, I’d say that for 40 years the role of the education system was to produce technically competent workers for the manufacturing industry, that of women to produce children and ensure that they were raised to be so, and that much of Korea’s current problems stem from how that arrangement is no longer appropriate for the 21st century even just economically, let alone morally.

So challenge the generalisations! Even if they are mine! But please read all my other posts on the issue first, as I think I can be forgiven for not  repeating all the information in them every time I post on the issue.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::