It’s time to move out!

I am staying in a suburb of Holland, where there are about 30 sheep around. One day, the owner of sheep told me that she would be separating sheep between mom and child for a year.
“Isn’t that cruel? Why would you separate them intentionally?” I asked her.
Then she replied that child needs to learn to live on their own, stop relying on their mother.
The day she separated them, the whole day both mom and child cried between the fence. However once, they learned that they would not be united again mom stops to cry then child eventually.

Observing this, I realized that most of European child move out when they reach their age of 18. Most of European friends I know told me that, by moving out they get to learn to survive on their own. How to clean, cook, socialize, find a mate and organize own financial administration. Surprisingly it is not only child who wants to move out when they reach certain age but also parents start recommending them to move out.

When I looked back in our culture, Korean, I realized that our moving out timing is way too late. Most of times, Korean people move out of their parent’s house when they get married or sometimes never. Even more, now that the average of age getting married in Korea is becoming older, it is even harder for the parents to let their child go.

The culture of Korea is to respect elders and pay the debt to the parents by taking care of them when they grow old. So normally, first son live with their parents even after their marriage. The concept of the ideal is good and reasonable, however personally I feel that it is heading into wrong direction. It is not hard to see 30 years single man/woman live in their parent’s house, getting pocket money from parents (some cases, people give handover their wages to the parents and let parents take care of the finance, in terms of investing and doubling the moneys and it is more often happen to the girls), getting advising on making decisions (most of times you have to take the advice of the parents as to respect them) laundry and cooking is always done by mother.

Therefore when they get on their 30’s, problem occurs. This is because when people get married, while they are immature on surviving themselves , has to learn to cope living with others at the same time.

For the parent’s point of view, living with their child too long, creates too big bonds that depression and loneness they will face is greater than the European parents. Let say if both European and Korean couple get married at the age of 28 and have a child at the age of 30. European parents face depression of ‘empty nest’ in their age of 48 to 50, while Korean parents face it on their age of 58 to 60. While European parents can face that depression much earlier/younger and have energy to find other hobbies or work to handle the depression that by the time they reach age of 60s, they get over with those feelings, settled down and able to enjoy their life. Yet I wonder whether Korean parent’s can handle that huge energy loss of depression on their 60s and be able to enjoy their life before the death.

I think it is late for Koreans for both child and parents. Ideal and practice cannot be same all the time and this is the case. The concept of the ideal is good, but it clearly delaying the development of the child’s independency. I am not saying we also have to move out at the age of 18 right away, but it is time to think of alternatives that would help child to learn to live on their own in early stage.