[In-Depth Look] Reflections on Healthy Families Society

Korea is a healthy family society. In the minds of many, there are healthy families and unhealthy families. A healthy family is the so-called normal family. It is basically composed of ‘couple-children.’ If one of the parents disappears due to reasons such as divorce, bereavement, or separation, it is called family dissolution. Such families are socially stigmatized. However, there is no eternal health nor eternal normality. The nuclear family based on ‘couple-children’ has only been familiar for about 30 to 40 years. Until the late 1980s, polygyny (meaning having a concubine) was occasionally seen but disappeared with industrialization and urbanization. The nuclear family took root as the form optimized for industrialization. It is the nuclear family as the normal family.

The industrial society structure that allowed economic dependence on the male head of the household has also collapsed. The nuclear family consisting of ‘a breadwinning father, a mother managing the household, and about two children’ is no longer the standard of normality. Look at the increase in single-person households. This is because a post-industrial society has arrived where every family member must provide their own food. Dual-income households have become common. Women who refuse to bear the full burden of childcare either do not have children or choose to remain unmarried altogether. As the economic dependence on men weakens, the fear of marriage dissolution such as divorce or separation gradually disappears. As a result, desires for various forms of life and various forms of families are awakening. Nevertheless, desires remain just desires and have not turned into demands. This is because the 30 to 40 years, which is ‘only’ a short period in historical terms, is a very long time for humans who live 70 to 80 years. It is not easy for people who have internalized the ‘value of the normal family’ to change their perceptions and behaviors so easily.

Recently, the private life of a political aspirant became the center of social controversy. Someone began to question the ‘abnormal and unhealthy’ past marital relationship. Regardless of the reasons, the woman was bombarded with criticism. Voyeuristic interest in whom she married and how she had children intensified. Even kind and good-natured neighborhood aunties and uncles called her ‘promiscuous.’ The MZ generation was no different. They condemned one woman within the framework of normal-abnormal and purity-promiscuity. Many others remained silent. Was it tacit consent? Or fear of being stigmatized as a similar person?

There is also an argument that strict morality and ethical standards are required to reach such a position. But that strictness and ethics are the so-called normal family, the healthy family. In fact, it is not about family but about a normal marital relationship, a healthy marital relationship. Efforts to live with my child and family in a state of already broken marital relationship and marriage dissolution are no longer subject to moral or ethical judgment. In fact, the relationship with my child and family itself can be diverse. Regardless of whose biological child it is, it is enough if the child and I live family life as a family. If one has sufficiently fulfilled the role as a guardian for the future of a minor child, that is fulfilling the role. No matter how public the position one attains, family life should be protected as a private sphere of human rights. Here lies the starting point toward a diverse society. However, once again, a public obsession with the normal family and healthy family has appeared. This obsession has been commodified as it is. Individualization, personalization, diversity, and Korean society? It is still a distant story.

Jaehoon Jeong, Professor, Department of Social Welfare, Seoul Women’s University

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