A Case Study on Korean birth customs during 1930s-40s

1930-1940년대 출산풍속에 대한 사례 연구

This essay has attempted to document the actual behavior patterns and the social networks related to the child delivery in the pre-industrial Korean society. We interviewed 30 women who had given birth to their first child during the 1930s and the 1940s in order to accumulate data related to son-prayer rites, prenatal care and food avoidance, sacred-string culture, and other incantation rituals. The characteristics of the social relationships with the person who had assisted the delivery and the recovery were also analyzed in terms of kinship networks. The results are as follows. First, there was a big gap between knowledge and the actual practices in birth rituals and customs. We assume that this is due to the adverse social-economic conditions at that time which may have restricted the actual performances of these customs. Second, there were almost no differences of the performance of these' birth customs between the urban areas and the rural areas. Third, the people who assisted the delivery were women who were mostly from the husband's family. Help from the wife's family were quite exceptional. Finally, it has been found out that only about half of the women who were interviewed performed the well-known custom of three-week after-birth confinement.