Having a child when you’re a grad student…

 

I always did some kind of work, even while I was studying. Since I had no inheritance, I could survive only by earning money myself. In this process, I never failed to pay my share of taxes. After I graduated college, I paid more taxes on my income than when I moved from factory to factory. Although I’m not working because of my studies and raising children, there’s a high possibility that I’ll be paying even more taxes after I graduate from grad school.

 

This is evident from looking at my husband’s situation. My husband, whose monthly pay was 500,000 won [460 USD] during his doctoral studies, now earns 500,000 won from just 2 hours of lecturing since he was awarded his doctoral degree. Of course, this isn’t always the case, but he’s paying more taxes than before.

 

However, I’m treated as a pathetic person who eats away the government’s welfare by the fact I even had a child when I’m just a grad student who can’t do any economic activity.

 

By attending grad school after having two children, I’ve become a woman who has baby after baby while she can’t even take care of herself. If I hadn’t gotten married and had just studied, I would be accused of being a ‘shriveled-up woman’ for knowing nothing but studying and being consequently unable to get married. And if I had gotten married and pursued only my career without having children, I would have been treated as a ‘non-adult adult’ who doesn’t have children because of her own aspirations and ambitions.

 

Are mommies unqualified to study?

 

I’m also a student. So I go to school. Only, the number of bodies I have to take care of  is, for a limited amount of time, two- my body and the body of the child who depends on me. Most spaces [outside of the school] do not welcome the person I am with these two bodies. In fact, far from welcoming me, the spaces I can enter are limited. If I go despite the difficulties, I am denigrated as a thoughtless mother who makes her young child suffer.

 

Seoul National University, where I’m studying, isn’t much different. There are no lectures halls, research labs, or common rooms where I, as someone who has two bodies, can enter. It is better not to go to school than to have to nurse in the bathroom stalls, sitting on the toilet lids. Nevertheless, I want to go to school. Why?

 

▲ The University of Chicago’s Student Parent Resource Center. ©Photograph: Lee Jin-hwa

Graduate school is where people who study for a living are gathered. Going through graduate school is a process of training and professionalizing your academic abilities. But studying should be done steadily, little by little; it is not an easy task to start up again once it has been paused. So I have tried to continue my studies, slowly, little by little. I did think it would be very difficult. But since I have decided to pursue these studies, doing it is my responsibility.

 

Someone said to me, when I had mustered up the courage and gone to school, that I couldn’t go into the library. “Why not? This newly built library is this large, and there isn’t space for me?” The school employee answered. “This is where students study.”

 

I said, “But I’m also a student here.” No answer. I can’t go to the library. I can’t borrow books. There isn’t any space to study. I, who has been excluded from the space of academia and research until my child grows up, am nothing but ‘a woman without will who is unsuitable for Seoul National University,’ ‘a grad student that is somewhat inadequate to be a researcher,’ ‘a thoughtless female who brings a stroller to a place where students study.’

 

Why have things become this way? If I hadn’t had children, if I hadn’t gotten married, if I hadn’t decided to study for a living, if I hadn’t been a woman…! Getting swept up by this unproductive flow of thoughts will only devastate me.

 

Harvard University, which has cozy lactation rooms all over the campus

 

Lee Jin-hwa, the vice-representative of Mom In SNU, accompanied me on my visit to US universities. Jin-hwa is currently a doctoral student studying spatial design at the Arts School. Consequently, she has a different perspective from me. If I look at a certain issue from the position of women and welfare, she thinks from the perspective of space and art. Thus, our companionship was meaningful. While I would look at policies and people, Jin-hwa would look at space.

 

Moreover, there were many people among the fellow Arts School students both junior and senior to her who had studied abroad. We received their help. Harvard University was the beginning. At the Harvard Graduate School of Design, I listened to what one such contact told us about the compatibility of studying and family as she worked on her graduation piece. And we visited the lactation room inside the Center for Government and International Studies Building right next door.

 

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

Harvard University has lactation rooms here and there all over the campus. There are buildings that don’t have lactation rooms, but most are within a 5-minute walking distance. At the beginning of every semester, the location and password of the nearest lactation rooms are provided to the students who need to nurse, depending on the routes they mainly take.

 

With such lactation rooms, you don’t have to go in the bathroom to express milk. Also, the time spent coming and going to a place where you can express milk is reduced. You can also save your breast-milk in the refrigerator inside the lactation rooms, and then give it to your child.

 

Jin-hwa explained the space aspects to me. These lactation rooms are designed to make use of small niches around the campus, to make it more convenient for the user. And although the lactation rooms of Harvard are small, they are created very practically in terms of space, and with such an atmosphere that the user can feel comfortable in them.

 

Even in the eyes of a non-expert, this was true. In contrast to those nursing rooms in public buildings in Korea where the spaces say ‘nursing room’ or ‘maternal lounge’ but is actually used as a changing room or lounge for female employees, this small space felt cozy and comfortable.

 

‘Childcare Center’ boldly situated on the 1st floor of the central building of MIT

 

At the MIT School of Engineering, we were able to hear about the school’s work-life policies and explore the on-campus facilities with the help of the public relations team employees. The team leader led us to a restaurant to have us taste clam chowder, which was said to be a specialty of Boston. On our way to the restaurant, we could see childcare center facilities here and there around MIT. Childcare centers that were all around the campus—and on the most conspicuous first floors at that.

 

▲ The first floor of the Ray and Maria Stata Center, a central building on the MIT campus that was designed by a world famous architect, is a childcare center. ©Photograph: Lee Jin-hwa

On our way to the restaurant, Jin-hwa took pictures, saying that the person who designed that building was among her favorite architects in the world. On the first floor of the building was an on-campus childcare center. Since there was a childcare center and a playground in the middle of the campus, it was a convenient location for the parents to go on to their lecture halls or their labs.

 

MIT had places here and there around the campus that made sure it wasn’t inconvenient to bring your child to school, the place where students and faculty learn and work. My situation of going to school with my child on my back and having to go to restrooms from the lack of places to express milk, and our reality of having to hold project meetings for joint research cautiously in on-campus cafés due to the absence of labs where I could take my child along contrasted with what I was seeing.

 

Moreover, the fact that the first floor of a building at the center of campus that was built by a renowned architect was not allocated to the students of MIT but to young children struck me as significant.

 

The University of Chicago was stately and dignified. As a social welfare student, it felt like a pilgrimage to come to University of Chicago, which is among the top schools of the field. Also, this place had been the first to send back a welcoming answer when I had requested a visit via email, which made me feel warmer towards it.

 

The Family Resource Center, which had been newly renovated last year, was an open space for on-campus student parents. There were various programs for children, resting spaces for parents, and rooms where caretakers could study. You could eat snacks and drink, and there were several staff members working.

 

▲ The Family Resource Center at the University of Chicago. There are also study rooms for caretakers. ©Photograph: Lee Jin-hwa

Students holding children are students too

 

What I had experienced until now are social systems and a culture that take for granted the premise that ‘if you want to be a mom, you have to give up your own development.’ Through my work in Mom In SNU, I confirmed that this was the common experience of studying moms (and dads). Then this is a problem of the systems that are unable to fulfill the needs of the members of the university society.

 

Systems—too large and distant to think about. What I need right now is a clean space the size of a single bathroom stall to express milk, a space where I can express milk without looking out for men, and a graduate student lab where it’s okay to take my child with me. Am I wishing for something I shouldn’t be? Does this university have the 2.6 billion won to use for end-of-the-year bonuses but no resources to create a lactation room, a nursing room, and a research space where you can bring your child that the 2,500 grad students can use?

 

My mentor, who I call ‘aunt,’ studied counseling in the US. If there is one source of conflict between me and my aunt, it’s the hostility and critical consciousness I have towards this country called the US. My aunt is worried that members of the younger generation such as I have animosity towards American society without even knowing it well. After only visiting a few universities here, I already feel as if I might understand her feelings. The universities in the US feel like paradise, at least to ‘students with children.’ Perhaps this is why people choose to immigrate.

 

But I haven’t lost my affection for Korea to such an extent as to consider immigration. So I’m going to lead the ‘student mother movement’ a little more. Currently, we are raising our voices to make the college campus a more friendly space for students with children. [Translated by Rose]

 

*Original Article: http://ildaro.com/7036 Published: March 26, 2015

 

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

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