Abstract
The study presented here explored the experiences of a Korean childless woman through self-reflection. The autoethnographic narrative describes the social encounters of the childless woman and how she constructs and presents her childlessness to others. It reveals her divided self experiencing ambivalence and inner conflict between her authentic self and her regard for cultural values. It shows her efforts to achieve the integration of the self and her struggle for destigmatization. The article focuses on a woman’s freedom of choice and highlights the need to empower childless women in a pronatalist society. Implications for social work professionals are discussed.
Since the 1960s, when feminism challenged the proposition that women and mothers were equal, the idea of motherhood by choice has spread in Western societies (Thorn & Yalom, 1982). Studies have shown that an increasing number of women in Western Europe and North America are choosing to remain childless (Bartlett, 1996; Gillespie, 2003; McAllister & Clarke, 1998; Morell, 1994, 2000). These Western studies have tended to highlight the attractions of a childless life, such as freedom, autonomy, and the increased opportunities to develop a career and relationships with other adults. Using the term childfree instead of childless reflects this social atmosphere. However, little is known about voluntary childlessness in non-Western cultures. Voluntary childless women in non-Western cultures may have to pay various social and psychological costs. To propose a transnational feminist perspective beyond Western-based gender oppression, it is necessary to articulate the experience of diverse groups of women throughout the world. Drawing attention to diversity issues would prompt a strengthening of feminism and the alliance of persons around the world who are committed to feminist social work.
Olesen (2005) claimed that feminist research problematizes women’s diverse situations as well as the gendered institutions and material and historical structures that frame them; refers the examination of that problematic to theoretical, policy, or action frameworks to realize social justice for women (and men) in specific contexts; and generates new ideas to produce knowledge about oppressive situations for women for action or further research. Considering Olesen’s elements of feminist research, the study presented aimed to identify both the social pressure and the internal conflicts a woman deals with when she does not accept motherhood in a pronatalist culture. Specifically, the study autoethnographically explored the lived experience of a childless woman, the author of this article, in Korea.
Childlessness has been affecting my everyday interpersonal encounters. The starting point for this autoethnography was my realization that I have not been telling who I am but, rather, what the pronatalist society expects from me. I feel a psychological discrepancy and self-deception that have made me powerless. I gathered the courage to start an autoethnography, keeping in mind Friedan’s (n.d.) words, “You can show more of the reality of yourself instead of hiding behind a mask for fear of revealing too much.” Through self-reflection, I use my own experiences to illuminate the culture and women’s psychology in that culture. While the narrative is personal, it is thoroughly shaped by sociocultural ideologies, norms, and values. The results of the study inform what should be in Korea or other cultures about the decision to be childfree while discussing the issue of women’s autonomy and the need for empowerment.
Korean Sociocultural Context of Childlessness
Korea had been influenced by a rigid Confucian orthodoxy for about 520 years before it became a modern industrial society. Confucianism was fundamental to politics, economics, and religion during the period. Regarding the roles and duties of women, Confucianism prescribed hyun-mo-yang-chuh (literally translated as “wise mother and good wife”) as the best exemplary woman. Instead of building her own career through education, raising her children as the mother and supporting her husband as the wife in the family were the best virtues for a woman. One key tenet of Confucianism is reproduction worship (Tang, 1995). Gong-ja-ka-uh, the book of the words of Confucius, stated that a husband can expel his childless wife from the family. Childlessness resulted in divorce and threatened a woman’s living.
Still, Korean women have been affected by the restriction of Confucianism because of its unique sociocultural system. In Korea, traditional values and modern norms coexist at the same time because of the compressed modernization (Choi & Chang, 2004). Korean scholars have argued that it took only 60 years for Korea to achieve modernization, compared to 200 years for Western countries (Bae, Won, & Yim, 2008). An unfortunate result of compressed modernization has been that government-led industrialization and institutionalization have occurred without regard for the everyday life experiences of ordinary people (Lee, 2004). As the advanced countries underwent gradual modernization, their citizens were able to adapt their values and customs to the new circumstances. However, it has been difficult for Korean people to reconstruct their sociocultural norms and to reach a new consensus in such a short time, while simultaneously dealing with the sudden waves of technologies, resources, and Western civilization. Korean people live amid contradictory beliefs because of the coexistence of tradition and modernity. In particular, women learn equality, free choice, and respect for diversity in the official educational system but are still restricted by traditional Confucianism in family life. They are taught to procreate to carry on their husbands’ family bloodlines. Abortion is against the law in Korea. The concept of voluntary childlessness is still new to Korean people.
Recently, the Korean government strengthened pronatalism more actively to secure an adequate labor force. The government proclaimed October 10 as Pregnant Women’s Day in 2006 and put out the message in public service announcements: Having more babies is more patriotic (Choe, 2010). The government regards voluntary childlessness as being against the national policy. It is common, for example, in governmental and nongovernmental job or public and private school interviews to ask applicants about their marital status and the number of their children. Because the border between the private and the public is constantly violated in Korea, it is difficult to keep a childless woman’s choice private in everyday communication. Combined with the child-centered everyday culture, this disregard for privacy creates a milieu that suppresses women’s freedom to choose their lifestyle and to express their choice.
Method
Feminists have suggested that women can identify and interpret the effect of sexism as they link everyday personal experiences to the realities of patriarchy. Recognizing the powerful political force of reflected personal experience, I decided to write an autoethnography to describe human microinteractions and the corporeal feelings that are related to them.
Autoethnography is “a self-narrative that critiques the situatedness of self with others in social contexts” (Spry, 2001, p. 710). It is useful for legitimating the inclusion of self and culture (Etherington, 2004) in that it witnesses experience that must be grounded in an awareness of the environment and culture (Wright, 2008). Autoethnographers are “believing that words matter and writing toward the moment when the point of creating autoethnographic texts is to change the world” (Jones, 2005, p. 765). Autoethnography can help social workers to develop their understanding of themselves, others, and social conditions, which is congruent with the goals of feminist social work (Averett, 2009).
Because of the nature of autoethnography, I have tried neither to represent all childless women nor to make generalizations. I also do not discuss why I am childless because I believe the choice should be respected no matter what the reason is. I intentionally do not mention my marital relationship because I want to focus more on the interactions between a culture and the intrapsychology of a woman. I often refer to previous studies about other cultures when the views they offer have validity for Korea and for my reality.
To elicit authentic accounts of my childlessness more effectively, I conducted a mutual qualitative interview: I interviewed a childless woman named Kim (a pseudonym), and she interviewed me. Morse (2009) suggested that when qualitative researchers use their own experience in their project, they should be interviewed by another person. She noted that this strategy would be better than simply speaking into a recorder or making a diary entry. The strengths of this mutual interview were, while asking and being asked questions, to clarify the meanings of childlessness from my ambiguous daily experiences; to reawaken emotions, needs, and motives related to the experiences; and to compare and contrast my experiences with those of another childless woman. The mutual interview can intensify a process of reflexivity (Fook, 2002), which makes a researcher take the stance of being able to locate oneself in the picture, to appreciate how one’s own self influences the research act. This reflective, transparent self-interrogation could contribute to the credibility of the research. It also enabled me to deal with conflict between the self as a research participant and the self as a researcher.
As the researcher as participant in autoethnography, I have been married for 7 years without a child. Kim and I are the same age, 40 years old. Kim is a qualitative researcher and assistant professor at a university. She and her husband tried to have a child but failed. She wanted to adopt a child at the time of the interview. Kim and I had known each other for a couple of years but did not talk about our childlessness in detail before the interview. She understood the purposes of the mutual interview and agreed to participate in it. After interviewing her, I encouraged her to feel free to ask what she wanted to know about my childlessness.
The entire interview process took about 3 hours. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. The main questions of the mutual interview were (1) Why are you childless? (2) How do other people react when they first realize you are childless? (3) How do you deal with other people’s reactions to your childlessness? (4) What do you think about your interactions with others in terms of childlessness? and (5) What do you think about voluntary childless couples?
I conducted a relation-focused analysis that included what I felt about Kim’s narrative, what I realized by answering Kim’s questions, what I perceived in Kim’s reactions to my answers, and what I thought about the similarities and differences between the two of us. While analyzing the mutual interview, I reflected on how I react to others and examined my perception of how I perceive how I am viewed by others. I tried to recognize the narrated self-in-relation (Doucet & Mauthner, 2008) and to link the microlevel narrative with macrolevel structures.
Theoretical Approaches to Integrating Childless Married Women’s Narratives
The social construction of reality focuses on how the world is constructed and created and how subjective meanings become realities in daily life. The social construction of women, as acted out by the majority in Korea, reinforces the stereotype that they will become mothers, whether or not that is their main desire (Billings, 2003). The mutual interviews revealed that Kim and I had different perspectives on childlessness. Kim, like most Korean women, fully internalizes and endorses the traditional sociocultural norms and values of Korea. She advocates a pronatalist discourse, accepts the traditional definition of family, and criticizes voluntary childlessness. Her narrative represents not only her personal views but public opinions about childless married women with which I have been confronted. Kim’s comments are compared with my narrative and are integrated into the autoethnographic results. The results describe the everyday social encounters of a childless married woman and the psychological process of dealing with these encounters.
Interpersonal Encounters
As soon as formal greetings are exchanged, people usually ask me, “How many children do you have?” They are simply trying to start a conversation. I answer, “I don’t have a child” and hesitate to add “yet.” If I add “yet,” the next reply is invariably, “You should hurry up.” A problem occurs when I answer, “I don’t have a child” and omit “yet.” I wish people would say, “Whatever!” However, they almost automatically say, “Why not?” Their question is accompanied by complicated facial expressions, including curiosity, criticism, pity, and a sense of superiority. I wish I could say, “None of your business.” Unfortunately, having a baby is everybody’s business in Korea.
If I equivocate in replying, “I tried to [have a baby], but . . . ,” they will probably say, “I am sorry.” Their pity seems to have two meanings: “You must be sad because you have no child” and “I apologize for reminding you of your infertility.” People readily conclude that if there is no child, there must be an infertility problem. In Korea, where the concept of voluntary childlessness is still new, not having children has been framed in terms of the tragedy and suffering associated with infertility (Yang & Rosenblatt, 2008). Women who are not mothers are defined by others in ways that emphasize their loss or a lack in their lives (Letherby, 1994).
If I nod and smile at their “I am sorry,” everything goes smoothly. My reaction resolves their guilty feelings about infertile women, satisfies their subtle sense of superiority, and draws sympathy for me. Kim also told me how she responded to people around her.
If I answer that I do not have a child, some people keep asking me, “Do you know what the problem is?” Others change the subject quickly because I must be embarrassed. Someone asked me once, “Do you intend not to have a baby?” I answered, “Not at all, I love children.” He smiled and nodded at me, “I see.”
Persuasion
People try to persuade childless women to accept the traditional definition of a family by listing all the advantages of having children. They try to persuade childless women especially by saying, “If you have a child, you won’t worry about a poor old age.” According to the Korea Civil Code Section 974, adult children are under legal obligations to support elderly parents. Filial piety is also reinforced by family systems, institutional education, and the media. For example, various prizes for filial conduct are set up and awarded by local governments and social organizations in Korea. In college admissions, there is even a special screening process for applicants who win an award for filial conduct.
At the same time, women are used to depending on their children’s legal obligation to support elderly parents and on filial piety instead of gaining financial independence. There is a traditional norm called sam-jong-jie-do, which indicates the three people whom women are supposed to obey: their fathers before marriage, their husbands during marriage, and their sons after the death of their husbands. In later life, women can receive support from their children as compensation for their compliance.
People also persuade childless women that children are the main psychological supports for elderly parents. Kim described a childless family in later life as follows:
I think my husband and I make a good family. However, I can’t deny that a couple plus children makes the most perfect family . . . If a couple doesn’t have a child, they have photos with only two people. Only two people in photos. It must be very lonely. They might be OK when they are young, but when they get old, it must be very sad.
Threat
When people realize that their persuasion has not been effective, they start to threaten childless women in a roundabout way. Their threat is usually related to the possibility of adultery. People threaten childless women by saying that “A husband easily has an affair when he has no child” or “A husband may bring home a child from an affair.” The threat indicates that childbirth is a wife’s duty and that when she does not fulfill this duty, she is the one to be blamed for her husband’s affair.
The threat also reflects the fact that because women are financially and socially dependent on their husbands, they need to give birth to maintain their status in the family. As a sign of insecure status, childless women do not have a proper title or a defined name at the microlevel. Korean people rarely call married women by their names except in the workplace or at school. If her child is X, her husband, relatives, and neighbors call her “X’s mom.” The woman also introduces herself as “X’s mom.” She gives up her own name and achieves a new title, X’s mom, which can solidify her position in the family and extended family and with neighbors. Then, people are confused about how to address childless women. In my case, my colleagues call me Dr. Y, but my extended family members usually call me “Hey.” In this way, childlessness becomes a woman’s master status or, in other words, “the main prism through which people define themselves and are judged by others” (Remennick, 2000, p. 825). All the other merits and accomplishments of the childless woman are ignored or diminished by the master status.
Even the Korea Civil Code threatens the rights of the childless person. According to the Korean Inheritance Law, when one spouse in a childless couple dies, the living spouse must share the inheritance with the parents-in-law. Childlessness deprives the surviving spouse of the full inheritance.
Criticism
People criticize childless women when they realize that their persuasion and threats have not been effective. This criticism not only arises in personal interactions, but it serves as collective punishment for nonconformists who deny the cultural norm that motherhood is the primary duty and the highest service of women. A national study on prejudice and social discrimination (South Korean Women’s Development Institute, 2004) reported that Korean people believe that voluntary childless women are “selfish.” Childless women can be criticized as “less socially desirable, well-adjusted, nurturing, and mature, as well as more materialistic, selfish, and individualistic” (Park, 2005, p. 376). They refuse self-sacrifice and stand in contrast to the best exemplary Koran woman: a wise mother and good wife. People argue that a childless woman does not give her husband a chance to be a father, does not provide her parents-in-law with grandchildren to perform ancestor memorial services, and does not carry on her husband’s family line.
Kim also described voluntary childless women as immature, selfish, and arrogant. She said that voluntary childlessness is against God’s will and is based on the mistrust of the spouse. Her comment supports Veevers’s (1980) claim that the deviance of the voluntarily childless lies not only in the fact that they do not have children but primarily, especially for women, in the fact that they do not want them. As Kim said:
They [voluntary childless women] think, “Whether or not to have a child, it is my choice! I can have a baby, but I just don’t want a baby.” They seem so arrogant, immature, and selfish. They refuse sacrifice for the sake of their freedom and comfort. I want to tell them, “Grow up!” I even feel pity for them. They refuse so many joys of having children. God said, “Be fruitful and multiply!” They intentionally refuse God’s command . . . Maybe they don’t trust their husbands. I will not have a child if I cannot believe in my husband. But if a woman loves her husband, she naturally thinks, “I will give my husband a baby just like him.” A child strengthens a marital relationship.
Coping
It is a lose–lose game to explain the reason for childlessness, whether it is by choice or infertility. Some people do not believe the answer “I don’t want a child.” For those who believe that motherhood is instinctive, having a child is not a matter of want but when. They hardly recognize voluntary childlessness and assume that it is a lie to hide infertility. While some involuntarily childless couples may lie because they fear the shame of infertility, no doubt some voluntary childless couples pretend to be infertile for fear of social criticism. This may be a reason why it is so difficult to find other voluntary childless women who will speak up for their position. These women seem to hide their support and agreement with voluntary childlessness. Sometimes when I feel criticism is more bearable than shame, I answer others with “I choose to be childless.” At other times, when I fear criticism more than shame, I give them a vague answer, “I tried to have a baby, but . . . ”
People sometimes criticize a childless woman to her face, but most of the time criticisms are made in the form of gossip. Knowing that I may be the subject of gossip makes me withdrawn and self-cautious. I feel that I am supposed to act differently from the stereotyped childless woman. For instance, I overly congratulate other people if they have children and pretend to be interested in what they say about children. Although I should be cautious about suggesting gender differences, I have observed that women show more sympathy toward infertility while men have more difficulty in understanding voluntary childlessness. I have also noticed that young people are more supportive of individual choice. I therefore tailor my answer to particular audiences to minimize social discomfort.
Park (2002) claimed that pronatalism requires childless individuals to engage in information control to manage their deviant identities. Remennick (2000) also stated that childless women tend to use strategic avoidance instead of openly challenging the motherhood mandate. To achieve social affirmation, I am using coping strategies, such as selective disclosure (Goffman, 1963) and excusing my childlessness with the pretense of infertility or postponement. However, these deceptive and passive strategies do not build confidence, autonomy, and self-esteem among childless women. They exacerbate the inner conflict and the divided self.
Divided Self
While Kim interviewed me, I found myself making up excuses for my childlessness just like in everyday encounters.
When I listen to you, you seem to rationalize your childlessness. You keep explaining why you have to stay childless. (silence). You’re right. I don’t need to give others a great explanation about my childlessness. I should simply say, “I don’t want a child.” That should be enough . . . People keep asking me “Why?” I hate to answer them. People should stop asking me. I should stop explaining. I am not confident enough, which makes for a long excuse.
Mead’s (1934) theory of the emergent self helps explain how my divided self has been shaped by internalizing the values that are assumed to be held by a generalized other. The generalized other was mediated through my family, relatives, friends, and colleagues. I have observed how each responded to having children and behaved on the basis of how others around me reacted. Cooley’s (1902) concept of the looking-glass self also explains how I know and feel about myself through my imagination of how others perceive me.
My discomfort is connected to a sense of self-shame and guilt. I am also worried that my shame may become the shame of my family. Goffman’s (1963) idea of stigma assumes that the stigmatized person holds the same beliefs about her or his conditions as the rest of society. I have not yet arrived at the point of rejecting the hegemonic norms and destigmatizing my self. In interpersonal encounters, I am still bewildered by my divided self because of the discrepancy between my virtual social identity (how a person is characterized by society) and my actual social identity (the attributes really possessed by a person). Although I have chosen to break out of my socially constructed world, I am not about to say that now I am at peace. I am still hesitant.
The divided self results in self-doubt and powerlessness, which prevent me from voicing my choice to others. I feel ambivalent about confronting other people’s attempts at persuasion, threats, and criticisms. I feel anxious about the quality of my relationships with others after I have communicated my choice of childlessness. Paradoxically, I suppress half of myself to preserve a relationship, which leads to a sense of isolation even while maintaining the relationship. The choice to be childless seems full of fears of social isolation and of the need constantly to justify that choice both to others and to myself.
Discussion and Implications for Feminist Social Work
This is the first autoethnographic research on Korean childlessness. I, a childless female researcher, used reflexivity to bring my lived experiences into the realm of international social work knowledge. As Lyons (2006) noted, social work is globally informed, so international discourses are important in deeping social work’s understanding of the relationship between the local and the international.
This article has described the social encounters around the issue of childlessness and the ways in which I present my childlessness to others. This autoethnography is neither about a rebellion against motherhood nor a defense of abortion. It is about a woman’s struggle with confusions, ambivalence, and contradictions that are played out in everyday experiences while seeking the freedom to choose her lifestyle.
Wright (2008) claimed that the writing of reflective narratives may affect the author’s own perceptions of events. Frost (2009) also suggested that people use stories to make sense of changes in their sense of self and in their relationship with their surroundings, particularly at times of breaches in their sense of identity. While writing the autoethnography, I became aware of my divided self, which is ambivalent about who I am and who I am supposed to be culturally. Although I am still struggling with my divided self, the self-awareness and insights gained by the examination of my own experiences has contributed to the therapeutic use of self. Although I am still worried about the risks of publishing this autoethnography, I have found that writing it has been a process of empowering myself.
This autoethnography is a starting point to challenge the pronatalist cultural discourses that fuse hegemonic femininity with motherhood and to consider reproductive diversity as a political goal in Korea and in similar contexts. To make the decision to be childfree possible, the study suggests that women need to be conscientized about the oppression that affects their choice of lifestyle, have courage to challenge the imperative of motherhood, and find allies in their context and even in other cultures. First, conscientization is a necessary precursor to engaging in social change (Freire, 1970). Many theorists of empowerment have focused on the stage of conscientization, intensive reflection of oneself in relation to society, during which individuals come to understand the political dimensions of their personal problems and act accordingly.
Second, respect for voluntary childlessness is possible only when women have the courage to dispute the conventional notion that “bearing and rearing children are central to a woman’s power and well-being, and reproduction brings in its steady and concrete benefits over the life course” (Riessman, 2000, p. 112). This conventional notion prevents women from living independently and renders them powerless in the patriarchal society. As McKinnon, Davies, and Rains (2001) acknowledged, in attending to differences among women, feminist theorists and activists need to challenge the ideology of the monolithic family and the social construction of motherhood.
Third, finding allies is crucial for the decision to be childfree in pronatalist contexts. I have tried to let my voice be heard and hope that it will lead to a joining together with others in a similar position. Future research on childlessness needs to include voices in various other cultural contexts. How women in other non-Western cultures experience their childlessness, how their society judges them, and how the dynamics between an individual and macrosystems work in considering a woman’s freedom of choice should be explored in future research.
The study would contribute to cultural sensitivity, which is essential for effective social work practice. A culture-sensitive approach would enable social workers to develop a historical, contextual understanding of women’s experience. The National Association of Social Workers (2001) also underscored the need for feminist social workers to engage in culturally competent practice, including cross-cultural knowledge, cross-cultural skills, and cross-cultural leadership. This autoethnography will help social work researchers, educators, and practitioners to embrace the psychological struggles of childless women in non-Western cultures, respect their decisions, reduce prejudice against them, and finally empower them. Childless women thereby empowered can challenge and reject the external social definition of their status. Doing so will enable them to voice their choice without apology, remembering that “no woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother” (Sanger, 1919, p. 6).
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.