South Korean Women and Marriage
HarryCH
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
I have seen several articles today about the low South Korean birthrate. For example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68402139
Apparently many South Korean women are opting out of dating, marriage and children. While each of them individually has a perfect right to do so, the long-term prospect for the nation is not bright.
I don't know if this phenomenon is limited to women. I don't know to what extent it is found in other countries. The world is arguably over-populated, but as I think over my various friends, I can think of some who have no children and have brains and talents worth passing on.
What do you think? What am I missing?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68402139
Apparently many South Korean women are opting out of dating, marriage and children. While each of them individually has a perfect right to do so, the long-term prospect for the nation is not bright.
I don't know if this phenomenon is limited to women. I don't know to what extent it is found in other countries. The world is arguably over-populated, but as I think over my various friends, I can think of some who have no children and have brains and talents worth passing on.
What do you think? What am I missing?
Comments
Doublethink, Admin
Given the choice, many women prefer autonomy, a career, financial independence. Some would like that and children, but the societal structures make it inordinately difficult. Some despair at bringing children into a world of impending catastrophe.
Moreover the idea that 'brains and talent' will automatically transmit to offspring is, in my observation, not invariably the case.
I have every sympathy for women in Korea. I looked at the marriages of people I knew when I was growing up and sensed that I would be deeply unhappy in such an arrangement. I have never regretted my choice.
South Korea could bring in millions of, say, Indonesians to ensure its population remains constant despite South Korean people not reproducing. But in a few hundred years the South Korean people would still have gone extinct (word quoted from the article in the OP), and the country would be ethnically and culturally Indonesian - South Korea as a people or nation would, in fact, have ceased to exist.
There are a lot of cultures that don't work well for women. Once women are able to choose whether to have children, these cultures will either change or they'll die.
And so what if cultures die? Plenty of human cultures already have. Others have grown up in their places, and more will grow in the future. Maybe at least some of them will be good for women.
I have a hard time mourning the loss of any culture that makes half the population so deeply unhappy that they override their own drive to reproduce.
There's a lot of assumptions in that that could be challenged. But if we accept the idea that cultures that have higher birth rates treat women worse, and women who have any choice have fewer children that still doesn't mean that the former will outcompete the latter as cultures. Culture is not transmitted genetically like eye colour - culture can be assimilated - American culture has taken over a huge amount of the world and that's not because the Americans have been having 10 children each.
But I don't think this is really true. There are certain small aspects of US culture that have been widely spread, but there is no sense in which you can go to a "huge amount of the world" and find that it feels culturally American.
Whether "treating women like actual whole people" is a cultural aspect that spreads is rather an open question.
There is a genetic component to intelligence. Most estimates suggest that between half and three-quarters of the variation in human intelligence is explained by genetics, and the remainder is due to environmental factors. There's also a genetic component to "being able to run fast", "being built like a brick privy", and so on.
This is different from the statement that a specific individual child of two intelligent, highly able people will be similarly talented. If you look at the children of really exceptional people, they're usually not as extremely talented, but they're usually still pretty bright. This is exactly what you would expect.
If high birth rates were a good idea, Nigeria wouldn't be trying to increase contraceptive use. And if a culture is not good for women, is it truly thriving? For half the population, it's just existing.
And yet in other contexts it is frequently argued that having intelligent or talented parents is an unfair advantage for the child. It can't be both.
Well, taken to the extreme if every woman elected not to have children then that might be better for them as individuals, but the entire species would die out within a century. I'm not sure how that's better for humanity as a whole.
*Same with some men of course
**Assigned female at birth; I am not a woman, I am nonbinary. However I am a person capable of bearing children
Please reflect and respect that. Thanks.
Louise
Epiphanies Host
How fast someone runs or even how they're built are easy to measure. (In the case of being able to run fast there's nothing more to it than the messurement.) Intelligence is completely different.
I regret and apologize for the fifth sentence in my original post, which is not, in retrospect, helpful.
There are demographic consequences - you need to adapt to the idea that people should continue to do some useful work in their older age, whilst accepting that they can't do the same things at the same speed as they could do as a younger person.
In terms of what would encourage parenthood, I'd suggest that social factors and support were more important than a tax structure. A culture that supports parenthood is one that encourages taking time off work when your kids are sick, that has flexible hours so a parent can ensure the kids get safely to school, and then go to work, normalizes career breaks for parenthood, supports work from home and other flexible working arrangements, and so on.
Tax breaks really don't cut it.
South Korea has the world's lowest fertility rate, a struggle with lessons for us all
Some useful context here from 2022
Feminists are protesting against the wave of anti-feminism that's swept South Korea
There had been a epidemic of men taking and sharing voyeuristic images of women - most notoriously the Nth room scandal, where these were being shared with hundreds of thousands of subscribers in a chatroom (there's a netflix series called 'Cyber Hell' that documents this).
There was a scandal with K-Pop artists being black mailed into sex and then filmed covertly around the same time (see Burning Sun), which because of its nature became connected with the first instance.
Then there was Korean GamerGate that targeted female workers in a gacha games company.
There was a lot of push back on these issues from feminist groups, but in response a small but very vocal group of self-proclaimed incels targeted female activists (most recently with deep fake revenge porn). The media which was largelyconservative both-sided the protests which fed the anti-feminist protestors sense of grievance and allowed them to paint their opponents as 'radicals'. Which leads to Louise's article above with feminism on the back foot, and their opponents believing they can 'drive it out of the country'.
There appears to have been a drop in the number of women openly identifying themselves as feminist as a result, but equally the continued drop in things like fertility and an increase in women staying single. There have been social attitude studies that show that the political and social views of women and men in South Korea continue to diverge quite significantly:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GeNbErZXgAAXn4v?format=jpg&name=medium
This assumes that high birth rates are either good in every nation (or region etc) on earth, or bad in any nation (or region etc) on earth. The nuanced position that some places need higher birth rates and some lower is not countenanced in your post.
Whether it's good for women is a related but distinguishable question. Clearly this is not taken into account (enough) in our western culture. And it certainly should be.
I didn't make a claim. That was the first time I posted on this thread.
So I should quote your post and say, "See? Nothing about differential needs"?
Gwai,
Epiphanies Host
I think a lot of social institutions are built with a certain number of bodies assumed to be passing through them. And there are jobs, entire economies built around this flow of humanity. When that flow surges or peters out, there are consequences.
Weal and woe, good and bad are generally based on where you are, but I think that dramatic fluctuations, especially in the downward direction, create a lot of negative consequences.
Of course, at least in the US, I'm often inclined to think that we could just open the doors to more immigrants and refugees, which would patch the hole and relieve pressure on other places. But it is evident that a few too many people in this godforsaken place don't listen to people like me.
I think reduction in population in developed countries should be managed so they don't fall off a demographic cliff, but smaller populations in countries where individuals consume a lot of resources - the worst offender being the US - would be a good thing.
The other problem with this analysis, beyond what @Ruth has pointed out, is that US colleges and universities already serve a large number of foreign students. In fact, since such foreign students usually don't qualify for domestic scholarships or "in state" tuition rates, a large part of the business model* of such institutions is subsidizing the tuition of native-born students with foreign enrollees who pay "full freight" tuition.
* The current trend of running American academia "like a business" is problematic in a bunch of ways that are not relevant to this point, so I'll mention it without going into detail.
In contemporary developed societies, children are a massive long-term cost. For the US, estimates at the direct cost of raising a single child to age 18 vary between a quarter and half a million dollars, depending on what sort of assumptions you make. Then there are good odds they'll want more money to go to college. Ask parents what financial return they expect from their kids, and they'll laugh at you - that's not how kids work!
There are plenty of non-tangible benefits of having children, but they're a financial money pit. There are, however, significant financial benefits to society for having a supply of young people.
Ask parents what financial return they expect from their kids, and they'll laugh at you - that's not how kids work!
It was noticeable in the early C20th that the birth rate dropped firstly, and most quickly, amongst the middle classes who expected their children to remain at school until the age of 16 or 18, and then possibly remain dependent for several more years to attend university. The drop in the birthrate amongst the working classes, whose children could start earning a wage at 12 / 13 /14 and contribute to the household income was much slower.
The first two professions to have noticeably smaller families were doctors and Protestant clergy, in Scotland at any rate.
That's a keen observation. One of my best friends is a professor at a small town state university and he was just telling me that they're literally laying off tenured professors because of financial issues. And that's one of those things that's Not Supposed To Happen. And then I read a piece about birthrates and made the connection. Thanks for giving me another piece to put in that puzzle.
And personal affect aside, I'm not saying that these are "good" or "bad" in any ontological sense. I'm not in the business of policing other people. I just see consequences rippling out and struggle to take all of this with a sense of cosmic (or climactic) indifference. If one must try to think of a larger context, there are consequences that should be measured and considered seriously.
Though as @Leorning Cniht puts it: what's good for the individuals in society isn't always what's good for society. That's a fine point as well.
I also might suggest that when those two are not in alignment, that's a Bad Thing, as you end up causing suffering in the one to support the other. What does it mean to cannibalize society for the sake of the people in it? Or the people for the sake of society?
What is society?
reporting that the birthrate rose slightly last year, after eight years of decline. However deaths outnumbered births, so the overall population declined.
The average age in South Korea is now 45.3. The article doesn't give a figure for the percentage of married people of child bearing age, but clearly if half the population is aged over 45, the size of the pool of potential mothers / parents must be part of the issue. Plus, after years of low birthrate, the rising generation will be even smaller.
In the article linked in the OP, it states that in South Korea, although both men and women are entitled to take a year's leave during the first eight years of their child's life, in 2022, only 7% of fathers used some of their leave.
Of course, if women fear that taking time off to have a child will damage their career, it might be that societal expectations impact even more on men who take time off. It's possible that it's a joint decision by parents that the father will not take time off.
But to say "the ultimate answer to "why women" is that men can't have babies" doesn't cut it when men could, but don't, share the parenting burden.
A year's leave? Paid? And they don't take it?
Apart from any of these issues, which are absolutely, 100%, important, why would someone not take paid leave?
"Damage a career" comes in multiple different shades. There are explicit damages (if you take a career break, it looks bad on a CV, you're less current on relevant skills, and you tend to miss out on opportunities in long-term projects, because you stepped aside at some point during the process.)
There are also more subtle damages (you might not take time off, but making choices that mean you'll be home to have dinner with your kids means you'll turn down, or won't be offered, opportunities that the person in the next office might get).
So sure - take your paid leave. Work 8 hours and then go home. But it won't be you who gets the promotion, or the choice assignment that's coming up, or the performance bonus at the end of the year.
At the risk of contaminating this thread with Elon Musk, I used to know a guy who took an engineer job at SpaceX. He loved it, but in his words, "don't come here if you want a 9-5". He basically lived in his office.
This is not to say that raising kids isn't extremely expensive, but money alone doesn't explain what's going on. The culture matters too. There are all sorts of pressures lowering the rates of marriage and childbirth. Women in college vastly outnumber men. Young women are significantly to the left of young men. 30% of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ, most of them being bisexual; those young bisexual lefty women will have a much easier time finding each other than they will finding young men with whom they're compatible. Some of them will have kids, of course, but not as many as women in relationships with men (source).
Thing is, this doesn't have to be how it works. The culture could be different. Our collective values could be different. I wish I knew how to make it change, but I think it's important to at least point out that this is not necessary.
Agreed, to an extent.
There is some level where the person who spends more time working / thinking about work develops more expertise and stronger skills than the person who doesn't. I don't think this is a huge effect (it's not linear with time, certainly), but it's not zero. So that person becomes better at whatever it is they do than their colleague who splits their focus between work and family.
I agree that we can choose to have a culture that values family time, that normalizes not working late, and so on. That's a choice. But I'm not sure that the fact that the person who works longer develops more skills can be affected by choice.
I wonder too how universal basic income would affect birth rates.
Sure. But just like the generalization "men are taller than women" is not invalidated by the existence of tall women and short men, so is it true that if the same person spends extra time learning new skills, they'll have more skills than if they had spent that time cuddling their baby.
Amen.
Arguably, they’ll develop different skills, not necessarily more skills. There could also be skills developed from time spent with children, even in infancy.
I remember an old college-fellowship song we used to sing that went, "I am the church. You are the church. We are the church together. All who follow Jesus all around the world, we are the church together." I think if you make this secular and geographically confined, you might get to society. (I wonder if this song was based on that one about a walrus.)
Now, there are subsets of this that form their own societies-within-a-society. High society. Collegiate society. Others that aren't coming to mind. You can also look at certain ethnic or racial groupings as being societies in themselves -- made up of people sharing certain traits, associating with others within that society differently than others not in that society. I don't mean in a way that's exclusionary, but just that (say) Puerto Ricans might do things together in a Puerto Ricany way. Say a party or a Quinceañera.
Seen this way a person can be in more than one society --- a kind of intersectionality.
Now thinking of society, it's bad for the church to be a society, because a society is by its very nature exclusionary, inward-looking, or at least has a discernible boundary. And the church wants its boundary to be porous, if it is going to grow.
Just kind of thinking out loud here. If anybody pushes me too hard, I'll say I was just batting around some ideas. This is not set in stone in my mind. As Belle of the Ranch says, "It's just a thought."
However, it seems as though government policies might increase the fertility rate, but there is no possibility of increasing the rate from its current 0.7 to 2.1 without major societal change.
Therefore, South Korea will either have to adapt to a declining population, or embrace immigration.
Other countries face the same issue:
China has a fertility rate of 1, and a median age of 40.
Japan has a fertility rate of 1.2, and a median age of 49.
Italy, Spain and Germany have fertility rates of 1.2, 1.2 and 1.4 and median ages of 48, 45 and 45 respectively, but offset this with immigration.
(The figures re China, Japan, Italy, Spain and Germany are from the Worldometer website)
Oh, I completely agree there.
There too.
Well, that's kind of my life. I work Saturdays as a caretaker for disabled adults at an institution but otherwise I've been the house spouse, doing most of the house work and child hauling while my spouse has the Professional™ job that pays the bills and whatnot. Also, since they work from, we have the privilege that we can do a lot of juggling. I can occasionally give them help with a thorny work situation and they can pitch in on some chores.
It's an interesting life, and it gives me a lot of thoughts and opinions about "traditional family structure."
We have three kids and I do think that my "sacrifice" has made that work pretty well, though honestly, I kinda like the freedom and spare time I get along with the lifestyle. I have mixed feelings about going back to "professional" life in a real way, which I'm told is another traditional wife's problem.