The researcher chose ‘life history research’ as a specific research method in which the meaning of motherhood and a grandmother’s life history in the process of nurturing her grandchild can be rediscovered. An individual’s life history recorde... The researcher chose ‘life history research’ as a specific research method in which the meaning of motherhood and a grandmother’s life history in the process of nurturing her grandchild can be rediscovered. An individual’s life history recorded in this research is not only a reflection of social norms and the memories in the past history, but also of her own assessments and resistance to traditionally defined norms. The research participant, a grandmother Kim is an eighty years old female and has been providing her stories of nurturing family care and life history through continuous interviews from October 2015 to June 2016 for this research. The researcher collected, recorded, and analyzed Mrs. Kim’s life history along with other research data related to this topic, and tried to find the meaning of nurturing and experiences that are melted in the life of Mrs. Kim, a grandmother. Through this, it was possible to see how an individual’s life interacted with the society and how she obtained the necessary knowledge and particular social behaviors as the value, norm, and language of society. Also, as the 80 years old person tells her life story in 2016, it is clear that as she reflects on her life with her nurturing history, she s the past events and personal feelings from the history, but also interprets them in her own present view. Mrs., Kim’s concepts of mothering experience through her chronological life history are in followings: First, Mrs. Kim’s childhood occurred in the times of nation’s liberation and the Korean War, and her nurturing experience influenced by these social contexts was based on a particular life style ‘survival’ and ‘labor.’ It indicates that the motherhood of women who were born in the years of 1920-30 meant basically ‘survival’ itself (Lee, SunHyung, 2011). It was then a society that placed the ideology of ‘we’ before and ‘individual’ in a traditional patriarchal Confucian culture and an extended family system. The war often forced people to live in a group living setting and the motherhood meant for sacrificing and living for the entire family or group. After her childhood through the teen-age years, Mrs. Kim had a role of mother and of a second nurturer as the oldest daughter in the family while working as a female-diver and care provider for her younger siblings. The motherhood here was the equation of ‘labor’ plus ‘nurturing.’ That was the life style of a female in the family, it was the life of mother. Mrs. Kim started going to a Christian church and left Jeju Island to live her own life, intending to form her own family after spending her adolescence years. Soon Mrs. Kim again formed her own community having a role to take care of the family in a Christian church setting. The concept of the motherhood then extended to an idea of caring the humankind in general, more specifically taking care of people who needed extra helps as well as of her own family. With Mrs. Kim’s marriage, she continuously practiced her nurturing and caring method obtained from the past experiences, took care of her own children as well as did economic activities with labor that she was used to as a means of economic survival. Living with her parents-in-law, giving births and taking care of her children, Mrs. Kim did not feel any sense of difference or problem of adjustment to a new relationship formation, marriage. It was understood that both marriage and nurturing own children was the duty of a woman rather than an individual’s choice and contribution to the society she was in. To Mrs. Kim, economic difficulties were not as harsh compared to poverty she had experienced in her childhood years, and the choice to nurture her daughter’s daughter as a way of helping her daughter was from her personal nature. Interestingly as Mrs. Kim nurtured her granddaughter, she again formed a new concept of motherhood, and these new nurturing experiences strengthened her individual choice of ‘motherhood’ and beliefs in it. To Mrs. Kim, co-habitation within family was important, thus she didn’t understand her daughter’s divorce. Yet Mrs. Kim decided to offer a child care for her daughter, initially reminded her of ‘abandonment’ and ‘isolation’ she had in her childhood. Nevertheless this decision motivated her to take the time of nurturing ‘more actively and seriously.’ Through nurturing her granddaughter, Mrs. Kim was able to remember her own life in more detail, and should be again able to adapt ‘new’ as well as ‘familiar’ things to her own life. And it was from her motherhood experience rather than duty to be responsible of and nurture her granddaughter and was her own decision to nurture a grandchild. To understand her granddaughter, thus Mrs. Kim jumped into the society and culture that her granddaughter was in and she actively collected information and communicated with that generation. This mothering approach was practiced in 1960-70s when she was nurturing her own children. To Mrs. Kim, nurturing her granddaughter revealed what lacked in her own motherhood experience and drove her live again with newly shaped motherhood. Mrs. Kim conceptualizes ‘the lack of motherhood’ as ‘laziness’ and emphasizes ‘responsibility.’ This can be interpreted as an emphasis on ‘the responsibility for one’s life’ rather than that on the financial responsibility. ‘Responsibility on one’s life’ as motherhood is beyond the traditional, or educated concepts for motherhood designated to women in which women are often forced to feel guilty of not fulfilling responsibilities, or from their own inner conflicts trapped between work and nurturing at home, and presents ‘motherhood’ as a way of ‘just doing her best.’ In Mrs. Kim’s life history, social contexts and her own concepts on motherhood mutually interacted, influenced each other, and changed accordingly. To Mrs. Kim, ‘sea’ from her childhood and teenage years was a significant social context that formed the belief and value system of nurturing and motherhood. With combining all experience such as diving into the sea to feed the family, learning new concepts on family at church, and conversing with other grandmother at the playground of her granddaughter’s elementary school or at neighborhood bench area as well as at a public bath place where she communicated with other grandmothers, nurturing became to mean ‘farming and harvesting together.’ Mrs. Kim’s motherhood is ‘sharing and feeding together,’ ‘gladly taking the role of nurturing if it is given,’ ‘diligently taking care of,’ ‘watching over a child’s growth,’ and ‘finding joy in nurturing.’ Thus, Mrs. Kim decided to ‘survive to nurture.’ The motherhood from this research illustrates that motherhood, no matter how harsh social or economic conditions women might face, is in its nature ‘to diligently survive and live to nurture’ and this motherhood becomes a critical element for a child’s becoming a healthy member of human community, while strongly suggesting that a child counselor play a role of ‘staying and living diligently’ for a child’s growth.
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