The first birthday of my younger son was on January 7th. I boarded a plane to Boston the next day. As the plane moved further away from the ground, it seemed as if the distance from the uneasy situation I was in was increasing. I had never spent a day away from my children. There wasn’t a single day in the weeks before that I hadn’t slept with my first child snuggled against me. I already miss his body, wriggling and filled with energy that would wake me. Whenever my breasts swelled with milk, I was consumed with longing for my younger son, whom I hadn’t weaned yet. Worry about how I would get through the next 15 days, nearly got the better of me.

 

Really, I don’t know how I set out for a 15-day trip overseas when I’m this weak, hardly strong enough. 

 

▲ A union member who brought her child to the “Discussion to Improve the Institutional Environment for Graduate Students,” held by the Seoul National University Human Rights Center. ©Mom In SNU

I wanted to do “work that helps people”

 

I was born in the 1980s. When I was in my teens, the [1997] Asian financial crisis swept across the country, and when I was a young adult, the entire world wavered with the impact of the financial crisis that started from the US. With the Asian financial crisis, my family fell into the poverty class.

 

In addition to the confusion at home, I was beaten by a teacher in front of the whole class at the school I transferred to, the reason being that I had not marked the answer sheet for the test correctly. I had been beaten once before for horsing around with my classmates in front of the principal’s office, but this was different from then. The female teacher who was in charge of our class and taught ethics hit me until the 50-centimeter yardstick broke several times. I, who had been one of the so-called “model students,” voluntarily quit school. I did not want to learn “ethics” from someone who had violated my self-esteem.

 

I stayed in my room and read, but after a while I started work delivering the evening paper, saying that I was going to the library. I worked for a few months at a textile factory, and also at a factory that produced electronic accessories. With the money I earned from this, I bought books and went to private institutes geared towards preparing students for college entrance exams. My mother worked as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant, and she used that money to provide my younger brother with an education. I earned the money I used.

 

Fortunately, I didn’t become a “troublemaker,” thanks to the help of religion. When I was in my 20s, I wanted to be a Christian missionary, so I went to developing countries to receive missionary training. It was better than living in Korea. To resolve the problem of getting a visa, I enrolled in a university there and combined my studies with the missionary training. It was then that it came to me. It was not missionary work that I wanted to do, but “work that helps people.” So I decided that I should study that. Action without knowledge is not good, so I wanted to learn properly.

 

But when I returned home, what awaited me was the job of taking care of my father, who was living amidst cigarettes, alcohol, and a sense of failure. I watched my father die for a whole year. Watching someone as he dies a little every day is close to punishment given by God. That period ended with my father’s death.

 

After the funeral, I was left with debt from hospital bills, severe depression, and fatigue. For a year I cried as much as I wanted, doing nothing but eating and sleeping. And then I pulled myself together. My 20s was ending and I didn’t even have a college diploma; all I had left was my health. Since I didn’t have anything to lose anyway, I thought I would do what I wanted to do the most.

 

I wanted to study. After dropping out of junior high, I had obtained a high school diploma by taking the GED tests. I had tried looking into some colleges, but I wasn’t able to learn what I wanted to, and I had nothing to put forth as credentials. The only thing I could do was go back into factories to work in the assembly line, or wrap vegetables at a supermarket. But even though it was out of my league, I wanted to do “work that helped people.”

 

▲ Seo Jeong-won, speaking as the representative of parenting students at the forum held by the Seoul National University Association of Women Professors. ©Mom In SNU

I had nothing to lose. If I didn’t give myself a chance, no one would. I took the Bachelor’s Degree Exam for Self-Education and obtained a college diploma. I put my everything in studying, and I was extremely lucky. At the age of 29, I transferred into the Department of Social Welfare at Seoul National University as a junior, and when I went to the department orientation trip, a graduate student of around 25~26 years old patted me on the head, bestowing the advice to “study hard.” I studied hard like they said and in one and a half years, I graduated from the Department of Social Welfare and entered graduate school.

 

Raising children: lonely and lonelier

 

During that time I married an older doctoral student who I had met at a tai chi club. I didn’t think my exhausting life would get better after marrying, but I did expect that I would be able to live like others. We owned a house, even if it was an old, 17-pyeong [604 sq. ft.] house, and I thought we would at least be able to make a living, having received sufficient education.

 

But I think I had not been prepared to make a family. Until then, I had used most of my time and energy for my self-development. I had used time, money, and energy to live in a way optimal for this. I bought and ate all three meals from the school cafeteria, and home was just a place to sleep. I spent most of my time studying at the lecture hall and at the library. But upon getting married, the life my body was used to was the exact opposite of the qualifications for the so-called “good wife.” The kind of “good wife” who sacrifices for her husband and her family and takes on all of the housework.

 

Fortunately, we had had some conversations and discussions regarding housework before marrying, so my husband didn’t have that many expectations of “that kind of good wife.” My husband was also in academia. We respected each other’s work. But after I had my first child, things changed. I had to take a year off from grad school to raise my child at home. During then, my husband went to school early and come home late after studying what he wanted to. It didn’t seem fair. Why wasn’t I able to study? It was unfair.

 

But I felt guilty about thinking that way, while I had such a precious child. Stuck between discontent and guilt, I cut my hair. I harassed my husband. And I withered away. I had done my duties, doing my best to live well despite hardships, but I was again trapped between cement walls, lonely, not able to do anything. It seemed as if changing diapers, eating in order to produce breast milk, and nursing a son who couldn’t yet communicate had become my entire life. Everyday life consisted of days that would already be over without any development as I lived as someone’s mother, someone’s wife, putting 3 meals on the table. If this was how I would be living for the rest of my life, was there a reason to have lived so fiercely until now?

 

Were there people who were in similar situations? I decided to look for friends, clutching at straws. I created a group in our neighborhood for women raising children. Although we got along at first, the differences in standards of living and children’s ages became a factor that created distance. Even with our similar lives, living in similar neighborhoods, people showed off—bragging about their houses, cars, households, husbands, children… people who didn’t have anything to brag about got upset and left.

 

As I learned that making a group and managing it was not easy, my son grew old enough to send to daycare. The day I sent him to daycare and returned to school, I trembled, fearful. Even though everyone was busy with their own lives and didn’t give me a second thought, I felt as if people where whispering about me and criticizing me for being a “bad mom.”

 

There was no one to eat meals with or share stories of my child, who took up almost all of my life. I, whose only topics of conversation consisted of my husband’s faults and my child’s growth, wasn’t able to join the conversations of my classmates, who discussed methodology or projects. I thought that it would be nice if I had a friend I could talk to.

 

▲ Nursing in the bathroom due to the lack of nursing facilities. ©Mom In SNU

Excluded student moms that study with difficulty

 

And so I printed an announcement on an A4 pieces of paper announcing the creation a group, and put up 10 of them each day. I arbitrarily named the group Mom in SNU (Moms in Seoul 

 

National University). I invested 500 won in printing every time I went to school. I made an internet café, announced the group on the alumni homepage, and put up flyers along the paths I regularly took. People started to gather, little by little. 10, 20, 30, 50 100, 150, 200 people …

 

We created a general chat room in Kakaotalk and talked endlessly. Although there were people whose faces I never saw, we shared stories of raising children, taking time off from school, and of studying and parenting together, over and over. If someone complained of how hard it was to nurse early in the morning, someone who had been nursing would read it and sympathize. We shared baby products we no longer needed, created opportunities to meet each other through regular meetings, and went on outings together. I didn’t know why, but I felt a strong sense of connectedness and of being understood.

 

Then, I knew. These women, who were smart and didn’t seem to lack a thing, all had to stop their studies for a while after giving birth, were anxious that their number on the waiting list [for daycare] was pushed back, and were squeezing out their breast milk in bathrooms due to the lack of places to nurse. They couldn’t bring their baby into the classrooms or research labs; what’s more, they were refused entry into libraries.

 

I couldn’t understand the unreasonable things that were happening in college, a place that should be the most reasonable. As a grad student studying Social Welfare, I wrote letters about this issue that were published in the college newspaper and major daily newspapers. I made a visit to the school headquarters to protest, my belly huge with my second child. I researched the reality of the lives of parenting students and drew up a report. I sent it out to relevant departments and personnel by email. I participated in and testified at forums or public hearings about women, work-family balance, and the low birth rate. I planned various projects related to this, and I created a project proposal to create a family friendly campus.

 

But the male employees in their 50s who worked at departments related to student welfare treated me as an annoying person making civil complaints. They would take me to the cafeteria, rejecting my proposals as they told me to ‘have a meal and go.’ To them, I was nothing but an uncomfortable and burdensome ‘political and naïve grad student,’ who ‘caused problems,’ and ‘created more work,’ in ‘this reality that has no problems.’

 

I asked whether they were reporting my proposal to their bosses, or whether an expert on work-family balance or at least a welfare expert was handling this issue. The men in their mid-50s who had joined Seoul National University around 30 years ago in the lowest civil service position and who had now became high ranking officials receiving 100 million won [90,600 USD] per year, replied, “We can’t do what you want because there aren’t any rules or guidelines.”

 

Young women had given birth to the next generation, just as society had demanded of them, and they consequently were denied maternity assistance policies because “there aren’t any rules or guidelines,” their studies were put on hold, and they had to manage both parenting and their studies all by themselves. Whether it was people like me, who rose from humble backgrounds, or typical elite women, we had in commonly the experience of pausing our studies and being excluded in many aspects.

 

If no rules or guidelines existed, couldn’t they just create them? My demands to “make rules and guidelines” were echoless shouts to the male administrative employees in their 50s who had no intention of trying to understand the difficulties of the generation of female scholars that succeeded them. When I visited them or sought them out, they were very uncomfortable, and would listen to me but that would be it.

 

▲ Convenient and cozy lactation rooms are located here and there over the campus of Harvard University. ©Photograph: Lee Jin-hwa

‘What were colleges overseas doing about this?’

 

Last November, I was chosen to undertake a policy research service task for a governmental research institution. It was to research the situation of parenting students in universities and the female research labor force, and propose policies. In looking at what other countries where doing about this, I looked mainly at Europe and the US.

 

Europe, which already had a good welfare system established, had strong policies for childcare and gender equality, and there was a large discrepancy with our situation. On the other hand, in the US, rather than state welfare programs, each university had started to establish individual systems since the year 2000. Each university had a work-family balance department, and my research showed that these departments provided the required service for faculty, staff, and students.

 

We decided to research international cases, focusing on cases in the US. So I, as the representative of Mom In SNU and the researcher of this project, was to visit universities in the US. In particular, I was to visit Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and UC Berkeley for a total of 15 days to investigate what kind of policies were being implemented in what ways at research universities in the US that raised future scholars. [Translated by Rose]

 

*Original Article: http://ildaro.com/7019 Published: March 11, 2015

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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