The article (‘Why I never want babies’) is very interesting. The quotations the OP has selected from the article do not do it justice. This isn’t an article about women choosing to not have children because childbirth hurts and would require them to take time off work.
This is an article about the fact that legal and social systems have foisted all the real work (e.g., child-rearing, caring for sick family members, etc.) exclusively on women to the complete and total detriment of everybody.
Here’s another quotation from the same article:
“In this country, women are expected to be the cheerleaders of the men,” says Yun-hwa.
More
than that, she says, there’s a tendency for married women to take the
role of care-provider in the families they marry into.
“There’s a
lot of instances when even if a woman has a job, when she marries and
has children, the child-rearing part is almost completely her
responsibility,” she says. “And she’s also asked to take care of her
in-laws if they get sick.”
The average South Korean man spends 45
minutes a day on unpaid work like childcare, according to figures from
the OECD, while women spend five times that.
“My personality isn’t fit for that sort of supportive role,” says Yun-hwa. “I’m busy with my own life.”
– ‘Why I never want babies’ (emphasis mine)
I wrote “to the complete and total detriment of everybody” because this doesn’t just hurt women. A
cookie-cutter view of humanity is not only illogical, it’s downright
stupid. A man who is great with children - and excellent at being a
father - will be ridiculed if he chooses to become a house husband (I
don’t know if this happens in South Korea, but it absolutely does happen
in the USA.) A man who acts as the primary caretaker of his children
(even with a career on top of that) will constantly raise questions, all of which stem from the underlying
idea of, “OMG! A man actively raising his own children! There must be
some kind of weird, exigent circumstances for that to be happening! Why
else would he choose to do a woman’s job?!”
I know this because I watched it happen to my dad as I was growing up.
Yun-hwa admits that her personality doesn’t work for a supportive role. There’s nothing wrong with that.
My mother, likewise, didn’t have that kind of personality. But she didn’t have to choose between having a family and having a career (because she wanted both) because she found a partner who complemented her, who made it possible for her to have children and a career. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that my parents had “inverted” roles was far from a cakewalk. They took crap about it all the time. Hell, I took crap for it, too. All because my parents didn’t fit the cookie-cutter mold.
But, at the very least, my mom believed there was the possibility that she could find someone like my dad, which is why she kept looking. Yun-hwa doesn’t believe that possibility exists, so she was forced to choose between a career (and independence) and being forced into the care-giver of an entire family. She chose career and independence.
Anyone who reads this and says, “But letting the culture die out by never having children isn’t the answer!” needs to go back and read the article again. There’s absolutely no reason that all the real work in the world must fall to women. There’s no reason to assume that a woman would be better at child-rearing than a man. There’s no reason to think that a man can only contribute to a family by way of his career. There’s also no reason to think that women should give up their career to have a family (after all, nobody seems to think that men need to give up their careers when they have a family).
It’s true… letting the culture die out isn’t the answer. The answer is to change the culture so that it treats people, regardless of sex/gender (women, men, non-binary individuals, etc.) as equals. If all people were treated equally, then Yun-hwa wouldn’t have to decide between her career and becoming part of a new family.
Another quotation:
Speak to South Koreans from older generations about the low fertility
rate and the contrast in attitude is sharp. They see people like
Yun-hwa as too individualistic and selfish.
I start chatting to
two women in their 60s enjoying the stream-side park that runs through
central Seoul.
One tells me she has three daughters in their 40s, but
none has had children.
“I try to instil [sic] patriotism and duty to the
country with the kids, and of course I would love to see them
continuing the line,” she says. “But their decision is not to do that.”
“There should be that sense of duty to the country,” her friend chips in. “We’re very worried about the low fertility rate here.”
When I put it to her that if she and her contemporaries don’t have children her country’s culture will die, she tells me that it’s time for the male-dominated culture to go.
– ‘Why I never want babies’
From the comments, it seems this is being read as “let us all die out, then.”
Yun-hwa is pointing out that the culture needs to change. Yun-hwa (and the so-called Sampo generation) are not the problem. The problem is that male-dominated social and legal realities force women into the role of “the cheerleaders of men” to the point of where the only other option for a young, well-educated, hard-working woman is to remain completely independent.
The only reason the South Korean population would die out due to low birth rate is if it continued to persist with its male-dominated culture. And if that does happen, it wouldn’t be the fault of young, independent woman. No, it would be the fault of the entire population.
WOMEN: We’re not treated equally, so why would we perpetuate this system?
SOCIETY: Where is your sense of duty to this country!? To this culture?! If you don’t perpetuate this system, our culture will die! OUR culture. It’s yours, too! Don’t you care?
WOMEN: We do care. All you have to do is treat us as equals.
SOCIETY: Equals?! HA!!! We’d rather die off than do that.
I used “society” here because it’s not just men holding up the broken tenants of culture here.
