According to the 2022 Youth Life Survey conducted by the Korean Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA), 42.7% of married adults responded that they had no plans to have children in the future. This trend is in line with recent OECD statistics showing South Korea reached a record-low fertility rate of 0.8 (OECD, 2023). Taking into consideration that only 2% of births in South Korea occur outside of marriage (OECD, 2021), fertility decisions continue to be a dilemma almost uniquely faced by married couples. On the surface, this phenomenon might be interpreted as a shift in family values with the rise of individualism. but studies have shown that patterns of familialism continue to prevail among unmarried men and women (Kim, 2013) and the desire for marriage among adults has not declined (Raymo & Park, 2020). Therefore, forgoing marriage and parenthood must be understood as a practical decision in relation to social status and future prospects rather than a change in ideals (Chang & Song, 2010).

Despite the South Korean government’s pronatalist campaigns and financial subsidies, young adults continue to exhibit risk-averse behaviors in marriage and parenthood. These risk-averse attitudes are closely related to social class, wherein marriage and fertility intentions become negotiated choices for those who can bear the costs of social reproduction. Expanding on Caldwell’s “wealth flow theory” (1982), Chang (2010) explained the existence of “risk flows” in Korean society. According to Chang, wealth inequality and limited social mobility encourage individuals to forgo marriage and parenthood to prevent the social reproduction of inequality. Recent studies have shown that when young adults have a higher subjective socioeconomic status (Yang & Yoo, 2020) and a positive outlook on future class status (Kim, 2022), the likelihood of marriage and fertility intentions increases. Therefore, in the Korean context, family formation and fertility decisions are conditioned by the premise that families act as reproductive tools for social class.

The underlying notion of social reproduction pressures married couples, especially those with children, to internalize financial responsibility and obligations toward their families. Therefore, the low fertility rate cannot be understood as a positive reinforcement of individualism or self-agency. Rather, marriage and childbearing have become choices restricted to those with the resources to reproduce their social class, while exacerbating the pre-existing structures of inequality. Under these conditions, parenting requires strategic prioritization and entails unique stressors that negatively impact life satisfaction.

Studies examining parents’ life satisfaction (McLanahan & Adams, 1987), happiness (Ross & Van Willigen, 1996), and marital satisfaction (Aldous, 1987) all found negative associations with parenthood. Parenthood also predicts higher possibilities of experiencing poor mental health and depression (Gove & Geerken, 1977; Evenson & Simon, 2005), indicating that it may also lower quality of life. However, this claim has been debated. Contrary to these assertions, consistent findings have shown that parenthood is associated with lower levels of depression and psychological distress (Kandel, Davies, & Raveis, 1985; Bird, 1997). Even if parenthood has negative outcomes (i.e., for well-being and life satisfaction), positive implications, such as stronger life meaning, coexist with those stressors (Umberson & Gove, 1989).

These contradictory findings imply that positive and negative experiences coexist. After all, parenthood is not a black-or-white experience but a continuum of “costs and rewards” (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2003). Therefore, recent discussions on parenthood have focused on identifying the stressors and buffers that exist in different phases of raising a child. According to Pollmann-Schult (2014), parenthood itself is a rewarding experience positively related to life satisfaction. However, the various demands and costs of parenthood (i.e., sacrifice of time, financial stressors) cancel out the positive effects, resulting in an overall negative evaluation of parents’ subjective well-being. Specifically, adults with children are more likely to strengthen social integration (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2003) and have stronger life meaning with greater happiness (Emmons, 2003; Nelson et al., 2014), but also to have lower self-efficacy (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2003), more negative emotions and marriage troubles (Nelson et al., 2014), and financial constraints (Bird, 1997; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2003; Pollman-Schult, 2014).

The common conclusion that can be drawn from previous literature is that parenting, rather than parenthood itself, is a stressor for an individual’s well-being. Factors that cause a parent’s health to deteriorate, such as financial stress, time constraints, and exhaustion, are those especially relevant to the roles that parents must play. If parenting roles have significantly negative effects on parents’ health, it is crucial to understand what kinds of parenting expectations cause distress and how they impact life satisfaction.

Hays’s (1996) conceptualization of “intensive mothering” also highlights the gender essentialist principles of parenting. Traditional gender roles have highlighted the male breadwinner and female caregiver model, which, although no longer necessarily the prevalent arrangement, continues to place the bulk of the parental burden on women (Lewis, 2001; Ciccia & Bleijenbergh, 2014). The prevalence of traditional gender norms and the unequal division of housework (Kim & Cheung, 2015; Qian & Sayer, 2015; Hwang, 2016; Kim, 2017) lead to contrasting experiences of parenthood compared with men. Studies have shown that while parental status has a strong negative relationship with well-being for mothers, the same relationship is not consistently found among fathers (Hansen, Slagsvold, & Moum, 2009; Craig & Brown, 2017; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020). Rather, fathers reported a more positive association with well-being than mothers (Bird, 1997; Nelson et al., 2014).

Even when fathers experience similar parental stress to mothers, the types of parenting stress they acknowledge are clearly gendered. While women express greater concern and anxiety over hands-on care, fathers are more likely to worry about financial responsibilities (Chesley, 2011; Shirani, Henwood, & Coltart, 2012), and their parenting involvement remains predominantly related to recreational physical activities (Craig et al., 2014). Although fathers may actively reject notions of the secondary parent role and advocate for political changes in support of their involvement, mothers exhibit higher concerns about and involvement in children’s academic performance and development (Scheibling & Milkie, 2023). Drawing from these previous conclusions, the first hypothesis is as follows:

H1: Women share significantly stronger intensive parenting beliefs than men.

As highlighted by Nomaguchi and Milkie’s (2020) review, the effects of IP norms on parental well-being are an important yet underdeveloped area of study. Although previous research has established the overwhelming prevalence of intensive parenting, few studies have discussed its impact on adult well-being. Where such studies have been carried out, many have limited their samples to mothers, disregarding the impact on fathers (Nomaguchi & Fettro, 2018). As the literature finds that mothers who strongly believe in intensive mothering attitudes experience a significant deterioration in mental health (Rizzo et al., 2013; Gunderson & Barrett, 2017), the second hypothesis seeks to explore how IPAs impact overall life satisfaction for both genders.

H2: Higher intensive parenting beliefs are associated with lower life satisfaction among married adults.

Finally, while IPAs are negatively associated with life satisfaction, the effects may be disproportionate depending on gender. Previous longitudinal studies have found that intensive mothering beliefs worsen partner relationships owing to unequal childcare responsibilities (Faircloth, 2021), implying higher parenting burdens for women. Similarly, Musick, Meier, and Flood (2016) used the American Time-Use Survey to confirm the gendered implications of intensive parenting for women’s subjective well-being. Although being with their child for various parenting activities may increase overall subjective well-being, mothers uniquely express a degradation of happiness and report greater levels of fatigue. Based on these findings, the third and final hypothesis is as follows:

H3: Intensive parenting beliefs have stronger negative effects on life satisfaction for married women than for married men.

To test the first hypothesis, I examined gender differences for each IP item that measured a distinct dimension of the concept. Table 2 shows the distribution of responses and the t-test results for all items. Child-centered parenting attitudes showed the greatest and most significant gender differences. While most married men were “neutral” about the idea, the majority of female respondents agreed with the statement, resulting in an average score of 3.318. As the average for male respondents was 3.059, t-test results indicated that women do in fact have stronger beliefs about sacrificing their own time for child-centered parenting styles. Another dimension of intensive parenting that reported significant gender differences was “resource-intensive” which points to the economic strain parents go through when raising a child. Contrary to traditional beliefs about gendered parenting norms, the results showed that women are more economically concerned when raising a child. However, it is also important to note that the mean difference for “resource-intensive” attitudes, even if statistically significant (p < 0.05), was less than 0.05.

However, emphasis on parental responsibility did not show significant gender differences, though men had a slightly higher average score (3.088) than women (3.070). Married men were also more likely to endorse the belief that they were responsible actors for children’s development and success, which confirms the expectations of “check-im.” Finally, the component of “sacrificing” focused on whether parents should sacrifice their own careers for child-rearing. Responses here produced the lowest average scores for both genders, with 2.896 for women and 2.768 for men. The t-test results showed no significant gender differences, raising doubts about the notion that men and women share different levels of IPAs. However, considering the fact that 82% of the respondents were employed, it may be possible that most respondents shared a stronger need to keep their jobs to ensure financial support for their children. It can be concluded that while women and men show different IPA levels, the differences are minimal and inconsistent.

Despite the similar acceptance of IPAs by both men and women, the findings cannot be interpreted as an egalitarian shift. Its effects on life satisfaction require further analysis to confirm that married men and women share the burdens of parenting expectation in the same ways. In other words, the mere acceptance of a belief does not indicate that the respondents will internalize these values or be affected by their pressures. Therefore, I further analyzed the specific dimensions of IP that negatively impact life satisfaction.

Table 3 presents the results of the multiple OLS regressions using life satisfaction as the dependent variable. Models 1, 2, and 3 specifically look at how “child-centered” IP beliefs impact life satisfaction and Models 4, 5, and 6 measure how highlighting the “responsible” chek-im notion influences individuals’ lives. Models 7, 8, and 9 measure the “sacrificing” aspect of IP while Models 10, 11, and 12 focus on “resource-intensive” expectations of child-rearing. To check the robustness of each model, the first model of each IP dimension included all respondents in the analysis, whereas the second and third models examined the effects separately for female and male respondents.

According to Models 1, 4, 7, and 10, respondents with high IPAs expressed consistent and significant decreases in life satisfaction. Comparatively speaking, expectations of “sacrificing” one’s career for children had significantly lower substantial reductions in life satisfaction compared with others but remained significant. However, when the regression models were run separately for men and women, the negative associations were no longer universally valid. While “child-centrism” and “responsibility” negatively impacted women’s life satisfaction (Models 2 and 5), they were no longer present in the male subgroups. Interestingly, the “resource-intensive” measure was the only IPA that was consistently significant for both men and women, indicating that economic provisioning is the common stressful factor for married men and women with children.

In addition to IPAs, higher education and household income have also been reported as consistently increasing life satisfaction. These results confirm the previous discussion on South Korea’s social background, where socioeconomic resources and class play important roles in happiness and in marriage and fertility decisions. The regression analysis confirmed the mixed results for Hypotheses 1 and 2. While married adults with higher IPAs commonly reported lower life satisfaction, this was not consistent for all genders. For women, child-centered, responsible, and resource-intensive factors negatively affected life satisfaction, except for the sacrifice component. In other words, women were not significantly affected by societal demands to give up their careers for their children. Considering that 70% of married women were engaged in some form of employment, it is likely that the notion of sacrificing one’s job could be an easily rejected notion for the respondents. For men, only one IPA factor (economic provisioning) had a significantly negative impact on life satisfaction. Although men did not show significant differences in IP scores, the regression analysis confirmed that men did not internalize IPAs as much as women did. Men may accept and agree with parenting attitudes; however, with respect to actualizing these responsibilities, women bear the brunt of fulfilling their expectations.

Models 1, 4, 7, and 10 analyzed the interaction effects between gender and IPAs to visualize gender differences in life satisfaction. Model 1’s interaction effect contradicts that of previous models, in which the negative relationship between high IPAs and life satisfaction is buffered among male respondents. The results show that while men are significantly and substantially more likely to report lower life satisfaction rates than women, men with higher IPAs share a significantly more positive outlook on their life satisfaction than women do. The findings are illustrated in Figure 1 which depicts the interaction effect and its predictive margins for life satisfaction (90% confidence intervals). The first graph in Figure 1 demonstrates a continuous decline in life satisfaction among women for every unit increase in child-centered parenting beliefs, but not for male respondents. Rather, men showed an undisturbed continuation of their evaluations, despite the escalation of child-centered parenting attitudes. For Model 4, the analysis revealed an even more drastic disparity between men and women in terms of intensive parental responsibility attitudes. While men (b = -1.684, p < 0.001) and respondents with higher acceptance of intensive “responsibility” parenting (b = -0.455, p < 0.001) reported negative outcomes on life satisfaction, men with higher levels of parental responsibility were impacted not nearly as much as their female counterparts. The second graph in Figure 1 shows an upward increase among men, even with higher rates of intensive responsibility beliefs. In this sense, the findings fail to reject the third hypothesis, that IP has stronger negative implications for married women’s life satisfaction.

Figure 1. 
Interaction Effect of Gender and Intensive Parenting Beliefs on Life Satisfaction

However, recalling the contributions of Lankes (2022), I found exceptions to IPAs that Korean adults internalize. Models 7 and 10 examined two components of intensive parenting: “parental sacrifice” and “resource-intensive” attitudes. Compared with the first two factors in Models 1 and 4, these two components did not show clear gender differences in life satisfaction rates. According to Model 7, while “sacrificing” attitudes are minimally associated with negative life satisfaction, the interaction effect between gender and intensive parenting is not statistically significant. Even in Figure 1, the graph indicates a high variability in responses for both men and women. Neither men nor women consider “sacrificing” attitudes to be important factors of IPAs. Finally, Model 10 illustrates the impact of “resource-intensive” parenting attitudes on life satisfaction. Not only do resource-intensive beliefs predict a significant negative evaluation of life satisfaction (b = -0.580, p < 0.001), but, according to Figure 1, the pattern is similar for both men and women. The conclusion is that although gendered burdens of IPAs still exist, women do not internalize all the factors of intensive parenting.