2000년대 도시 여성의 출산문화: 문화변동의 장 (The Culture of Childbirth among Young Urban Korean Women: The Perspective of Culture Change)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국문화인류학회
· 수록지 정보 : 한국문화인류학 / 40권 / 2호 / 253 ~ 286페이지
· 저자명 : 김주희

초록

This paper documents behavior patterns and social networks related to childbirth in contemporary Korean society. Twenty-seven young mothers who had given birth to their first child since the year 2000 were interviewed to acquire the data concerning practices that include prayer rites for having a son, prenatal care and food avoidance, use of a sacred string, and other rituals involving incantation.
Characteristics of social relationships with the person who had assisted the delivery and the recovery were also elicited, and are here analyzed in terms of kinship networks.
Results are as follows. First, prayer rites for having a son were performed by more than one third of the mothers. Second, most of the mothers showed a strong belief in the efficacy of dreams related to pregnancy, but they took a more scientific approach to food avoidance. Third, the use of a sacred string and the Samsin incantation ritual were performed by a few mothers. It is to be noted that these mothers obtained information about the traditional rituals through the Internet.
Fourth, most of the mothers recognized the importance of Taegyo, which is prenatal care. They actively adopted the modernized contents of taegyo, emphasizing the emotional interaction with a baby and the stimulation of its brain. Fifth, most of our mothers practiced the well-known custom of three-week postnatal maternal confinement, which is feasible in recent years by virtue of economic development.
Sixth, more than one third of the mothers, most of whom were highly educated, used commercial after-birth confinement facilities which reflects a trend toward commercialization of childbirth in contemporary Korea. Childbirth has become a practice in which social class differences are highly accentuated. Finally, the people who assisted the mother after delivery was most often her own mother. It was quite exceptional that a mother-in-law was involved in her daughter-in-law’s childbirth.
Heated discussion on childbirth has been going on in the feminist academic world, primarily criticizing its excessive medicalization. However, it was found that our young mothers were totally dependent upon modern medical facilities. The area in which they showed initiative was in the use of traditional knowledge. Thus, childbirth can be analyzed from the perspective of culture change because the various cultural factors─ the extension of the female education, the development of medical science, religious change, increasing economic affluence, and commercialization─ do not have equal impacts on the formation of a culture of childbirth in contemporary Korea.

영어초록

This paper documents behavior patterns and social networks related to childbirth in contemporary Korean society. Twenty-seven young mothers who had given birth to their first child since the year 2000 were interviewed to acquire the data concerning practices that include prayer rites for having a son, prenatal care and food avoidance, use of a sacred string, and other rituals involving incantation.
Characteristics of social relationships with the person who had assisted the delivery and the recovery were also elicited, and are here analyzed in terms of kinship networks.
Results are as follows. First, prayer rites for having a son were performed by more than one third of the mothers. Second, most of the mothers showed a strong belief in the efficacy of dreams related to pregnancy, but they took a more scientific approach to food avoidance. Third, the use of a sacred string and the Samsin incantation ritual were performed by a few mothers. It is to be noted that these mothers obtained information about the traditional rituals through the Internet.
Fourth, most of the mothers recognized the importance of Taegyo, which is prenatal care. They actively adopted the modernized contents of taegyo, emphasizing the emotional interaction with a baby and the stimulation of its brain. Fifth, most of our mothers practiced the well-known custom of three-week postnatal maternal confinement, which is feasible in recent years by virtue of economic development.
Sixth, more than one third of the mothers, most of whom were highly educated, used commercial after-birth confinement facilities which reflects a trend toward commercialization of childbirth in contemporary Korea. Childbirth has become a practice in which social class differences are highly accentuated. Finally, the people who assisted the mother after delivery was most often her own mother. It was quite exceptional that a mother-in-law was involved in her daughter-in-law’s childbirth.
Heated discussion on childbirth has been going on in the feminist academic world, primarily criticizing its excessive medicalization. However, it was found that our young mothers were totally dependent upon modern medical facilities. The area in which they showed initiative was in the use of traditional knowledge. Thus, childbirth can be analyzed from the perspective of culture change because the various cultural factors─ the extension of the female education, the development of medical science, religious change, increasing economic affluence, and commercialization─ do not have equal impacts on the formation of a culture of childbirth in contemporary Korea.

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