The Grand Narrative

Over at Japundit, Peter Payne briefly discusses the phenomenon of kekkon taishoku in Japan, or leaving work to get married (I assume it’s exclusively used for women). My wife tells me there’s no equivalent exotic-sounding phrase in Korean (the real reason why Japanese culture is more popular than Korean) but the examples he gives of intelligent, sophisticated and (previously) career-orientated women quite happily…no, yearning to give it all up upon marriage will be familiar to anyone who’s taught Korean adults also. In my own experience, a good 10% or so of the women in their 30s that I’ve taught were already fluent, but happily confessed that they came to class more for social reasons and as a hobby than for learning English per se.

(Photo by comatosed)

Spending most of my undergraduate days either writing essays on the fallacy of the notion of “Asian Values,” or trying to pick up women at Amnesty International by joining their protests about them, then I completely disagree with Peter’s culturally-relativist sentiments that it’s inapproprite to judge this from his own US world-view. I do think that being a housewife is a waste of an intelligent woman’s abilities, particularly after 10+ years of career in a field that they enjoy, but notice that I didn’t say “raising children,” because yes, despite what I just said, my own wife is also a housewife and mother.

Why the contradiction? Well, we’ve decided that with the expense and widespread concerns over standards of childcare in Korea that this is best for our daughter (and our next child), but from what we’ve learned about childcare availability in Australia or New Zealand, then she would definitely work again if we lived there (which is…ahem…all I can really say about that online). Despite the boredom of being at home all day, she loves raising Alice of course (although it certainly helps that I’m doing much of it until I go to work at 1pm every day), and I’m reminded of a decade-old column I read in the New Zealand Herald about childless, soon-to-be (then) prime minister Helen Clark’s visions for childcare, which according to the columnist were based on an assumption that more women wanted to work but inadequate childcare facilities were the only reason preventing them from doing so, which the columnist, who was a mother, argued wasn’t quite the case. Somewhere in my possession I also have an Economist magazine article from 2000 or so that argued that the concept of going off to work and handing your children to complete strangers for the day was a recent anthropological oddity and hardly natural, and that thus, however cliched it sounds, “reconciling women’s roles as mothers and workers is one of the prime concerns of our age.”

I will try to find both articles if anyone wants to know more. In the meantime, I recommend you read this and then this article on the related subject of evolutionary psychology from Time magazine, both of which had a great influence on me at the time, and which briefly discuss the “naturalness” of modern-day childcare arrangements in passing (on pages 2 and 4 respectively). And if you haven’t seen it, then Mona Lisa Smile is a great movie dealing with all the themes above. It’s set in 1953, and if accurate, shows an environment clearly ripe for Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1970. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard that it discusses “Housewives Syndrome,” a term used by family doctors in the 1950s and 1960s to describe the physchological and physiological problems many women were developing because all they were expected to do with their university educations was cook, look after children, and clean the house for the remainder of their lives.

But despite all that, regular readers will not be surprised to find that I still think that the expansion and increased availability of childcare is by no means the only, but still the best route for the advancement of women in Korean society at the moment. To take a leaf from the 18th Century “Mother of Feminism” Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, where she counters arguments that women are inherently mentally inferior to men by pointing out that such comparisons couldn’t be made until women received the same education as men, I’ll accept that women instinctively want to stay home and only be mothers only once they have all options available to them. Until then, gynocentric feminists can just STFU.

But all this is not going to happen without the political will in Korea. So far on the blog, I’ve repeatedly mentioned that it is because of this lack that legislation is not enforced, but in hindsight discussions of where it is supposed to come from have been suspiciously absent. Maybe it’s because it obviously must come from Korean women themselves, whom I am not imposing my own worldview on when I say that intelligent and ambitious women happily giving their careers up upon marriage is wrong, self-defeating and basically, just, well…pisses me off.

That may sound too strong, even for a geek like me, but placed in the context of my Korean female friend that complains that Korean men refuse to wear condoms, to which I reply that I’m pretty certain that most Western guys pretended to be happy to suit up only once they were given the option of doing that or not getting laid…do Korean women really need to be told to demand the same? Then there’s the Korean female friends with great bodies who just whine that they’re fat all the time: they’ll dutifully nod at my pointing out how healthy andattractive they are, but will still starve themselves at their next meal. Naturally I just loved having my opinions so completely ignored, one reason why I’m not friends with anyone like that anymore.

(On a side note, unless the recipient is clearly anorexic, then literally telling a woman that she looks healthy in Korean “넌 건강에 좋아보여요” or “You-health-goodlook,” actually means “You look fat”. What is wrong with this place??!)

Regardless of how universally applicable the points in my rant are, a fellow blogger has pointed out to me that there is no greater indictment of a society than its members’ refusal to continue it, and I’m concerned that once my daughter starts school here then she too will indirectly learn there that it’s possible for a women to have a career, or to have children, but unreasonable to expect to have both. Needless to say, most Korean and Japanese women are choosing the former, and the results speak for themselves:

(Photo by ichico)

New Adults Fewer Than Ever

The number of people who reached the legal age of adulthood was only 1.35 million last year, which is the lowest number on record and 40,000 less than the previous year, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Monday.

The announcement came on the national holiday Coming-of-Age Day, held annually on the second Monday of January, as most new adults participate in Coming-of-Age ceremonies, women traditionally in expensive “furisode” kimonos and men in suits or dark kimonos with hakama.

Of the new adults, 690,000 are men and 660,000 are women, according to a Kyodo News report. Percentage wise, the new adults constitute 1.06 percent of the total population, which is down 0.03 points since the previous year.

The legal age of adulthood is 20 in Japan.

The previous record low, 1.36 million new adults, was recorded in 1987.

Thanks to Edward Chmura, again at Japundit, for bringing that article to my attention. Finally, here is some still woefully inadequate, but rare encouraging news from the Korean Times on the Lee Myung-bak’s Administration’s measures for dealing with the low birthrate in Korea:

Home Buying to Become Easier for Newlyweds

Newlyweds may see themselves a step closer to becoming homeowners by the year’s end, as President-elect Lee Myung-bak and his transition team is actively reviewing the ins and outs of his proposed housing policy for just-married couples. The policy is to take effect in the second half of 2008.

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation said Monday that the modified housing system is set to allow married couples of less than three years, who successfully pay monthly installments of 50,000 to 100,000 won into a housing savings fund, to get long-term home financing with low interest rates. However, couples must take the benefit within a year of having their first child.

The plan, which was one of Lee’s flagship campaign pledges, has been welcomed by young couples as buying a home in Korea is widely known as a cost-burdening and time consuming, but a must-do task for married couples.

A recent Kookmin Bank survey said that the average period it took for a couple to buy their own house after marriage was around 9.4 years, up two years since 2005, as local home prices have consistently been on the rise. Therefore, the initiative of the president-in-waiting is seen as a springboard for financially weak, just-starting couples.

The ministry said that the incoming government has plans to inject 4.1 trillion won to supply homes for the low-income newlyweds. It forecasts that the fresh policy will feed about 120,000 homes, each less than 80 square meters, into the market.

It added that the transition team is considering expanding the system to those who are eligible, but are already paying into a housing savings fund, to enjoy the same benefits.

Earlier, the president-elect said the reformed policy was ultimately drawn to encourage young couples from having more kids, as many are known to refrain from giving birth to a second child due to financial instability, including not owning a house.

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