Kim Jiyoung–Jung Jiwon Mother-Daughter Relationship

Kim Jiyoung’s relationship with her daughter, Jung Jiwon, develops within a life reorganized around care. Jiyoung loves her child and works to meet her needs, but motherhood also brings physical exhaustion, an abrupt end to a valued job, and a daily workload that others often dismiss or romanticize. The relationship is therefore presented not as a simple contrast between career and affection, but as an intimate bond lived under unequal expectations about who will care for a child and at what cost.

Before Jung Jiwon’s Birth

Before the birth, Jiyoung and her husband, Jung Daehyun, had not made a detailed plan for when to have a child. They shared the assumption that children were a natural next step after marriage, but Daehyun raised the possibility casually, while Jiyoung saw the decision as consequential. She had little direct experience of pregnancy or newborn care and worried about what pregnancy would change in her body and whether she could continue her career while raising a child.

Their work schedules made the question concrete. Both regularly worked late and on weekends, so ordinary daycare or a babysitter might not cover their needs, and neither set of parents was readily available to take over. Jiyoung felt guilty even considering care by someone else before the child had been born, yet also feared that their jobs would leave them too little time to be the parents they wanted to be. Daehyun listened as she described these fears and said he would take on tasks such as changing diapers, feeding the baby, and washing the baby’s clothes. He also told her that, if suitable childcare could not be found, she need not keep working for the sake of earning money; he would support the family.

As the due date approached, they compared three possibilities on a large sheet of paper: Jiyoung returning to work immediately, returning after a year of maternity leave, or not returning. For each, they considered childcare, cost, and other advantages and disadvantages. If both remained employed, the practical options were sending the baby to Daehyun’s parents in Busan or hiring a live-in nanny. His parents were willing, but elderly, and his mother had recently undergone back surgery. A nanny would be costly and would share the family’s everyday life as well as care for the child. After weighing these constraints, they concluded that one parent would need to stay home. Jiyoung became that parent, in part because Daehyun’s work was more stable and better paid, and in part because the conventional division of work and care made a wife leaving employment seem like the expected choice.

Leaving Work and Becoming a Mother

Jiyoung’s decision to leave was not evidence that she lacked commitment to her career. Her first job at a marketing agency had given her capable colleagues, satisfaction in completing assignments, and the independence of managing her life with her own earnings. She found the work enjoyable even though client interactions could be uncomfortable: older male clients repeatedly made gendered jokes, and at a business dinner Jiyoung was pressured into a seating arrangement and drinking she did not want. These experiences formed part of a work environment she had to navigate, but they did not erase what the job meant to her.

She did not cry when she told the company she was quitting, when team leader Kim Eunsil wished her well, or as she gradually took her belongings home. The grief arrived the next morning. After seeing Daehyun off, she woke and began mentally arranging an ordinary workday: breakfast near the station, lunch, perhaps a movie, and a bank errand. Then she remembered that there was no office to go to. With the familiar routine gone, she could no longer predict or plan her days in the same way, and the tears came. Jiyoung understood that caring for her child did not mean she lacked passion for work, just as entrusting a child to someone else would not mean a mother loved the child less. Her relationship with Jung Jiwon began alongside a genuine loss of professional identity and daily structure.

Jung Jiwon was born at four in the morning. Jiyoung found the baby so sweet that she cried more than she had during labor. Yet the tender first response quickly became inseparable from the demands of infant care. Jung Jiwon cried day and night until someone picked her up. Jiyoung held her while doing chores, going to the toilet, and trying to nap, and breastfed her every two hours, leaving little opportunity for uninterrupted sleep. She washed the baby’s clothes and bedding, cleaned the home, and made sure to eat enough to produce milk. She cried more than she ever had before and was in pain throughout her body. The care she gave was constant and practical, as well as loving.

Care, Exhaustion, and Family Support

The physical work continued to affect Jiyoung after the birth. Her wrists became so painful that she could not move them properly. At a nearby orthopedic clinic, she explained that she had recently given birth and that she could not rest her wrists because she had to care for the baby, do laundry, and clean. The doctor minimized the burden by pointing to household machines and contrasting them with the heavier work women had done in the past. Jiyoung recognized that a washing machine does not put clothes in or hang them up, and a vacuum does not complete every step of cleaning by itself. Technology may reduce parts of housework, but it does not remove the labor of managing it.

That exchange sharpened the difference between the visible presence of appliances and the ongoing work required to keep a household running. Since becoming a full-time housewife, Jiyoung had encountered attitudes that either dismissed domestic labor as doing nothing at home or praised it as life-sustaining, without calculating its monetary value. Neither description relieved her of the work. Jung Jiwon depended on Jiyoung’s daily attention, while the effort that made that care possible remained easy for others to overlook.

Jiyoung’s mother, Oh Misook, could not take time away from her porridge shop to help with recovery. The shop had lost business as more restaurants opened in the commercial building, and fewer workers meant longer hours for Oh Misook. She brought Jiyoung leftovers when she could, but her support was limited by the work she herself had to do. When Oh Misook praised Jiyoung for breastfeeding and raising the baby without her help as the power of maternal love, Jiyoung asked what it had been like for her own mother to raise three children. Oh Misook described an exhausting household: a baby who cried day and night, a husband who never changed a diaper, and a grandmother who expected three meals at home every day. Her account gave Jiyoung a rare view of the strain her mother had endured, rather than an image of effortless maternal strength.

Maternal Ideals and Everyday Attachment

Jiyoung resented being told how proud or noble others found her. She was doing her best to raise Jung Jiwon, but praise framed exhaustion as a virtue and made her feel guilty for finding motherhood difficult. Popular images of mothers and babies emphasized beauty and tenderness, while accounts of the actual demands of care were seldom shared in detail. The pressure to appear fulfilled could thus obscure Jiyoung’s ordinary need for rest and support. Her bond with Jung Jiwon was not weakened by fatigue; rather, fatigue was part of the conditions under which that bond had to be sustained.

When Kang Hyesu visited, their time together showed care in a more reciprocal, everyday form. Jiyoung breastfed Jung Jiwon, fed her solid food, changed her diaper, walked with her when she cried, and settled her for a nap while continuing to talk with her friend. Hyesu was hesitant to hold the baby because she feared hurting her, but she warmed the baby food, fetched clean diapers, and did the dishes. She could admire Jung Jiwon without presenting motherhood as a duty every woman should want. The visit briefly placed Jiyoung’s care within a social exchange: Hyesu did not take over the mother’s role, but noticed practical needs and helped with them.

Daycare and the Continuing Work of Care

A little after Jung Jiwon turned twelve months, she began daycare and adjusted to the new setting surprisingly well. Her day included drop-off at 9:30 in the morning, a snack, play, lunch, and return home before one. This created about three hours for Jiyoung, but most of that time went to laundry, dishes, tidying, and preparing food and snacks. She rarely had enough time simply to sit with a cup of coffee. Statistics cited in the account put the daily free time of a mother with a child under two at four hours and ten minutes when the child stayed home, and four hours and twenty-five minutes when the child attended daycare—a difference of only fifteen minutes. Daycare changed where Jiyoung did the work more than it removed the work itself.

When Jung Jiwon’s teacher said she was getting along well enough to try napping at daycare and staying later, Jiyoung chose, for the time being, to keep picking her up after lunch. Still, the possibility of having more time to herself stirred her interest in starting something new. The relationship therefore remains open to change: Jiyoung’s days are still organized around Jung Jiwon’s needs, but daycare gives her a small space in which to consider a life beyond immediate household tasks. Her maternal care is shown both in the repeated work she performs and in the possibility that caring for her daughter need not erase every other ambition or need of her own.