Kim Jiyoung and Jiwon's Mother-Child Relationship

Kim Jiyoung and Jiwon’s Mother-Child Relationship is defined by the intimacy of daily care and by the unequal conditions under which Kim Jiyoung becomes a mother. Jiwon’s birth gives her a daughter she loves, but caring for the child consumes her sleep, labor, and professional life; public judgments of mothers compound that burden. Their relationship therefore shows both the closeness of caregiving and the pressure placed on women to make its costs invisible.

Becoming a Mother

Before having a child, Kim Jiyoung worried about whether she could sustain a career while raising one. Daycare and babysitters seemed insufficient because she and Jung Daehyun regularly worked late and on weekends, while their parents could not provide dependable help. She also felt guilty for considering outside care before the child was even born. Jung Daehyun listened and promised to change diapers, feed the baby, and boil the onesies; he also said that, if necessary, she could leave her job and he would support the family. His reassurance addressed their immediate uncertainty, but the prospect of giving up work fell specifically on her.

Jiwon was born at four in the morning after a long labor. Kim Jiyoung cried when she saw her daughter, yet the early days of motherhood were marked by relentless demands: Jiwon cried until someone picked her up, and her mother tended to household tasks, used the toilet, or slept while holding her. Breastfeeding every two hours meant she could rarely sleep for more than two hours at a stretch. She washed the baby’s clothes and bedding, cleaned the house, and tried to eat well enough to produce milk, all while crying more than she ever had and hurting throughout her body. Her wrists became so inflamed that she sought treatment, but she could not follow the instruction to rest because the baby and the house still required care.

Care, Work, and Family Support

The work of caring for Jiwon did not end with feeding or holding her. Kim Jiyoung also had to wash and hang laundry, clean, and keep the household running. A doctor dismissed her exhaustion by comparing modern mothers’ equipment with the harder domestic labor of earlier generations. Her own reflection was that machines do not load themselves, handle detergent, hang clothes, or clean and dry the rags used on the floor. The exchange makes the relationship’s practical demands visible: the presence of appliances does not remove the work that sustains a child and home.

Kim Jiyoung’s mother, Oh Misook, could not stay to help her recover because she was working longer hours at her porridge shop. Competition from new restaurants and a reduced workforce had increased the demands on her, while the shop’s income helped support Kim Jiyoung’s younger brother as he extended his education. When possible, Oh Misook brought leftovers for her daughter. She also spoke of her own difficult experience raising three children: Kim Jiyoung’s father had never changed a diaper, and the children’s grandmother expected meals at home. The account connects the care Kim Jiyoung performs to an earlier generation’s burden, even as her mother’s work leaves little room for hands-on support.

Later, Kang Hyesu visited and saw how care filled the hours. While the two women talked, Kim Jiyoung breastfed Jiwon, fed her solid food, changed her diaper, carried her when she cried, and put her down for a nap. Hyesu was hesitant to hold the baby, but warmed food, fetched clean diapers, and did the dishes. Her practical help offered a contrast to the assumption that mothers should manage every task alone; she could admire Jiwon without treating motherhood as an obligation everyone must choose.

The Moral Pressure of Motherhood

Kim Jiyoung was often praised for raising her child, but such praise made it harder to admit how exhausted she was. She was responsible for Jiwon and wanted to care for her well; what she resisted was the expectation that she should feel noble and fulfilled at every moment. The idealized images of beautiful mothers and cute babies, she observed, left little space for the difficulty of ordinary care. Her mother’s candid account of pain and fatigue offered a different inheritance: not a story of effortless maternal devotion, but evidence that such strain had long been concealed.

The same moral pressure appeared in arguments about childbirth. Kim Jiyoung chose hospital care because she believed it was safer for both mother and child, while public discussion of natural birth and possible effects of medical intervention could make women feel guilty for choosing otherwise. In her view, presenting endurance of pain as proof of maternal love turned a personal decision shaped by parents’ circumstances into a judgment on mothers. That ideal followed her into childcare, where being tired could be recast as a failure to appreciate the privilege of motherhood.

Public Judgment and Its Consequences

After Jiwon began attending daycare, Kim Jiyoung took her to a nearby park and bought an inexpensive coffee while the child slept in her stroller. A group of office workers nearby spoke about mothers who stayed home as though they were idle and comfortably supported by their husbands. Kim Jiyoung hurried away, spilling coffee on her hand, and spent the afternoon dazed: she fed Jiwon cold soup, forgot a diaper, and later discovered that she had left laundry undone. When Jung Daehyun returned after midnight from a business dinner, she realized she had not eaten lunch or dinner.

She explained that the coffee had cost 1,500 won and that the money her husband earned was not a stranger’s to judge. More deeply, she connected the insult to what motherhood had taken from her: her routine, career, dreams, and sense of self. She had endured childbirth and devoted herself to raising Jiwon, yet strangers had reduced her to a contemptuous stereotype. Jung Daehyun drew her close and tried to reassure her, but the episode shows how public contempt entered the home and unsettled her capacity to carry on with care.

The relationship is thus neither reducible to sacrifice nor separated from it. Kim Jiyoung’s tenderness toward Jiwon is present alongside physical pain, interrupted sleep, lost professional possibilities, and work that others minimize. The novel locates their bond within those conditions: the child depends on her mother, while the mother’s ability to care is shaped by family resources, workplace demands, and a culture that praises maternal devotion more readily than it shares its costs.