Reconstructing Mothering1 among Korean Immigrant Working Class Women in the United States

Since the national origin quota system was abolished four decades ago in 1965,2 immigration from Korea to the United States has dramatically increased. Unlike previous immigrants who were mainly farmers and laborers, many new Korean immigrants arrived in the United States with urban, educated, middle class backgrounds (Kim, 1981; Kim & Hurh, 1988; Kim & Kim, 1998). They came with their personal capital, such as higher education, job skills, and more monetary capital than their predecessors.Nevertheless, Korean immigrants were not likely to maintain their original socioeconomic status after immigration. Many Korean immigrants tend to experience downward mobility to the working class after immigration; the job credentials or skills they brought with them do not guarantee the ability to maintain middle class status in the United States (Kim & Yu, 19%).Korean women's working outside of the home and its implications for motheringChanges in their status after immigration result in modifications in the constellation of these immigrant families. The most prominent phenomenon is that of women's working long hours outside of the home to secure the well-being of the families (Kim & Hurh, 1988; Kim & Kim, 1998; Min, 1995). For example, Min (1998b) reported that 75 percent of the Korean wives in his study participated in the labor force, and that about 56 percent of his respondents worked full time. According to the 1990 census (1993a), the most recent available statistics on Korean women's labor force participation in the United States, 55.5 percent of Korean women 16 years or older were in the labor market. Also, in Philadelphia County, 54.8 percent of females 16 years and older were in the labor force in 1990 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993b).Indeed, transitions undergone by Korean immigrant families raise the question of how Korean immigrant mothers parent their children. First generation Korean immigrant women come from a cohort and culture where their primary roles and responsibilities are as homemakers and childrearers. Mothers are expected to prioritize the needs of their children over their own, and maternal sacrifice for their children is unquestionably expected (Kim, 1998). However, having immigrated to the United States, their social context presents a contrast to their former situation, and economic necessity forces these women to become co-breadwinners. They must spend most of their time and energy working outside of the home to earn a living (Hurh & Kim, 1984; Kim & Hurh, 1987, 1988; Min 1998a, 1998b).In spite of the implications of the changes that Korean immigrant women undergo, mothering experiences in the lives of first generation Korean immigrant women have been largely unexamincd by family scholars. The relevant body of research regarding Korean immigrant women's employment in America primarily addresses the impacts of work on conjugal relations (Chang & Moon, 1998; Kim & Hurh, 1987, 1988; Kim & Kim, 1998; Lim, 1997; Min 1992, 1998b), but scholarly work on mothering among Korean immigrant women in a context of immigration is virtually invisible except the study by Moon (2003).In this study, we examine first generation Korean immigrant women's mothering in the context of working outside of the home post immigration to the United States. This work will show how they reconstruct mothering in a context framed by immigration, and further uncover how immigration, gender, and culture are interwoven in shaping these women's mothering.MOTHERING AND WORK IN THE LIVES OF WOMEN OF COLORResearch on mothering in the lives of women of color dramatically changed the way mothering was understood. By dismantling a discourse on the biological construction of mothering, which assumes the universalization of women's mothering experiences, work on women of color and their mothering practices shed light on how race, class, and gender are interwoven in shaping mothering experiences, particularly in the United States. …