{"id":67697,"date":"2015-09-09T09:03:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T14:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67697"},"modified":"2017-09-17T20:30:13","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T01:30:13","slug":"tae-gyo-prenatal-intensive-mothering-in-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/09\/09\/tae-gyo-prenatal-intensive-mothering-in-south-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"Tae-gyo: Prenatal intensive mothering in South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ideology of intensive motherhood\u00a0is a cultural approach toward parenting<\/a> that suggests that competent childcare\u00a0demands\u00a0\u201ccopious amounts of time, energy, and material resources\u201d and\u00a0that providing such childcare should take priority over everything else a mother might like or need to do. \u00a0In South Korea, this imperative\u00a0is at work even before babies are born\u00a0and the practice is called\u00a0tae-gyo. A reporter for the Korea Herald<\/em>, a local newspaper, explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Since over 600 years ago, expectant mothers in Korea have been practicing taegyo, a series of prenatal routines aimed at nurturing a healthy, virtuous and skilled child. They try to see and hear only the most pleasant things starting from three months of pregnancy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Koreans believe that a mother’s state of mind and ongoing education during pregnancy determines a baby\u2019s prospects. Their educational and\u00a0occupational future, even their personality, is dependent on what their mothers do while they’re pregnant. A reporter, below, quotes a South Korean figure who claims that\u00a0“nine months of prenatal education is more valuable than nine years of post-natal learning.”<\/p>\n

Interest in tae-gyo is escalating thanks to\u00a0declining birth rates and hyper-competition. Fewer\u00a0Korean couples are having more than one child and they want to give these \u201csingle\u201d children an edge by helping them from the womb.\u00a0 They want their children to survive in a hypercompetitive educational environment.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, while the most common tae-gyo used to be listening to classical music, women are facing increasing pressure to do more and more for their child before it is born. During the past 20 years, tae-gyo has incorporated learning calligraphy or floral arrangement, crafts like knitting and sewing, and doing yoga. Expected mothers are doing English and math tae-gyo, meaning that they study\u00a0English and do math for their unborn children\u00a0to ensure that they will\u00a0excel in those skills. Korea\u2019s tourism industry have developed a \u201ctaegyo travel package,\u201d which is supposed to be beneficial for babies in the womb.<\/p>\n

This can all be quite intensive, as you might imagine, as women are expected to personally practice all of the skills and traits they hope their baby will have.\u00a0Intensive mothering in South Korea, then, starts before the baby is born.<\/p>\n

[youtube]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YX2C1ueBxY4[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sangyoub Park, PhD, is an associate\u00a0professor of sociology at Washburn University, where he teaches Social Demography, Generations in the U.S., and Sociology of East Asia. His research interests include social capital, demographic trends, and post-Generation Y.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ideology of intensive motherhood\u00a0is a cultural approach toward parenting that suggests that competent childcare\u00a0demands\u00a0\u201ccopious amounts of time, energy, and material resources\u201d and\u00a0that providing such childcare should take priority over everything else a mother might like or need to do. \u00a0In South Korea, this imperative\u00a0is at work even before babies are born\u00a0and the practice is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,329,55,2103,2091,2088,252,272,1788],"class_list":["post-67697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-emotion","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-healthmedicine","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-healthmedicine","tag-marriagefamily","tag-nation-south-korea"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/09\/4.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67697"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71760,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67697\/revisions\/71760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}