There is a growing trend of restaurants and public areas having child-free zones in developing nations and developed nations in the Global North.

This is demonstrated in South Korea’s case; signs state no 8 to 13 years old in their restaurant.

Today, some 500 kid-free zones do not include areas that usually prohibit children, such as bars or nightclubs, according to thinktank Jeju Research Institute.

This trend is not just exclusive to South Korea.

Still, it is spreading worldwide with the decline of birth rates and generation gaps between generations and younger siblings, which leads to children and young adults not having experiences with babies.

On average, couples have just one child or, more commonly, no child at all, which means that young people don’t have experience with being around their sibling’s children because there is no sibling.

Due to the breakdown of the family unit, people are becoming more individualistic.

Being a community or an individualistic society has its pros and cons.

If you are an individualist, this means you will not support the family in hard times but also mean you, in turn, will receive now paid from family or extended community because they no longer exist.

When engaging in a relationship with friends, the maximum you can have is five friends due to the time constraints due to work, sleep and other activities factor into this partnership.

This is a sexual relationship between a man and woman or different combinations.

This means that inside a sexual relationship or a boyfriend, girlfriend or other arrangements, the available friendship goes from 5 to 3 people because a partner requires more time with their boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife to develop and maintain their relationship.

The Rise of Childfree Zones in South Korea — Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

Delayed Parenthood

Between 2015 and 2020, the mean age for first-time mothers in South Korea was over 32 years, the highest in Asia-Pacific.In contrast, Bangladesh and Nepal had the lowest mean age for women at their first childbirth.

What this means is that South Koreans are starting families in their 30s.

This means there may be one child with the average birth rate in South Korea below the replacement level between 0.74 and 0.74, which is well below the required national replacement level of 2.0 or, in layperson’s terms, two children per couple to maintain a stable population.

Another factor of delayed parenthood is a need for more experience of mothers and couples to interact with young children to gain experience.

The only way to be good with children and babies is to have more experiences with younger people.

By looking at one estimate, more than a third of Korean men and a quarter of Korean women in their mid-to-late 30s will never marry. Even more, will never have children.

In 1960, Korean women had, on average, six children.

In 2022, the average Korean woman could expect to have just 0.78 children in her lifetime.

One factor behind this outcome is that South Korea is a modern society favouring individualism and the ability to choose multiple partners.

At the same time, a highly traditional society becomes having children within the institution of marriage. Therefore, the decline of marriage throughout the Western world and global North nations, including South Korea, contributes to a lack of marriage, leading to the decline in births.

A solution to this is accepting alternative relationships or couples to pair bond and have children relationship and not through the traditional institution of marriage.

Final Comments

For as long as humanity has existed, children and babies have been brought and raised into this world globally there’s only 3% of the world’s population is not falling or declining birth rates.

The choice of people to have or not have children is a social choice due to people’s factoring in their wants and needs before the good of society.

We can choose to have more pay or have children.

This is an individualistic choice which I believe is people’s right to choose, but ultimately, it’s a choice they decide to make.

If people wish to have children, there is nothing any government can do to stop it.

If you like this article, please leave a common I’m interested in your thoughts, opinions or possible solutions to any of the content within this article due to my wish to expand my knowledge of the subject matter and interested in anybody’s views who has more experience with South Korea.

Thanks, begins to read enjoyed, and I wish you and all my fellow readers and writers good fortune.