Whenever I look at statistics on the total fertility rate—which represents the average number of children a woman of childbearing age (15–49) is expected to have in her lifetime—I feel a twinge of guilt as a female citizen. Now that I’ve turned 50 this year and am finally exempt from the “duty” of childbirth, I feel incredibly relieved.
The low birthrate crisis is palpable even here in Seoul, where I live. As the school-age population shrinks, the elementary and middle schools near my home have closed one after another over the past three years. Every May, the annual “Blessing of the Unborn” ceremony at my parish—part of Life Sunday—is on the verge of being canceled due to a lack of participants.
Looking around me, the situation becomes even clearer. My longtime friends are prime examples of this low birthrate phenomenon. Of my five friends I’ve known for 20 years, four are married, but only one is a parent. That means the nine of us—including our husbands—have produced only two children.
In a world where it’s hard enough to take care of ourselves, we couldn’t bring ourselves to be so reckless as to invite someone else into it, so marriage and childbirth were delayed. By the time we were finally ready, we were already on the express train to infertility.
At the newspaper where I worked for 25 years, women made up just over 30% of the total staff. Even though the percentage of women joining the company increased every year, the proportion of women on the payroll always hovered around 30%. This was because it was a recurring pattern: senior and junior colleagues at the peak of their careers would struggle to balance being “working moms” and would eventually leave the company.
There were a few rare senior colleagues who managed to juggle childcare, housework, and their jobs with seemingly superhuman ease. They were the type who literally worked themselves to the bone. Faced with the extreme choice between quitting or becoming a “superwoman,” my friends and I chose “not to choose.” We opted for a life of singlehood or childlessness.
Meanwhile, the “working moms”—the backbone of the total fertility rate—who were barely holding on became worn out. If they continued working, they were lectured that “a mother should raise her own child”; if they quit, people worried, “It’s a tight squeeze even with two incomes.” They said “giving birth is patriotic,” yet every extreme survival struggle afterward fell solely on the mother’s shoulders.
Despite the chronic low birth rate, which has led to theories of national extinction, the church’s stance is subtly different. Whenever I hear the “Universal Prayer for Couples Struggling with Infertility,” a corner of my heart feels uneasy. The problematic passage reads: “May they resist the temptation of unethical assisted reproductive technologies at the moment of choice and be guided toward the path of respecting life.”
The church prohibits any artificial intervention in the process of conception, including artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF). When I was first recommended IVF at a fertility clinic, I was more terrified by the daily injections into my abdomen, the egg retrieval and implantation procedures, and the terrible side effects caused by hormonal disruption than I was by the church’s ban on assisted reproductive technology.
Those who undergo IVF are brave women willing to endure risks and immense physical pain in their quest to become mothers. It is not a choice anyone would dare to make simply because they were pushed into it. Their journey toward life is marked by far too many tears.
As of last year, South Korea’s total fertility rate stands at 0.80. It has been below 1.0 for eight years now. With policy and social infrastructure designed to support work-life balance failing to function properly, who could feel at ease having a child? The total fertility rate can only rise again in a society where marriage and childbirth are not seen as challenges that jeopardize one’s career.
The Church must also show thoughtful consideration for those who earnestly desire to become mothers. We must comfort their hearts so they do not undergo fertility treatments with a fearful sense of guilt, and we must actively proclaim God’s mercy. For God, the Lord of life, will rejoice more than anyone else in a world where the laughter of children never ceases.
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