Angela Lin 0:14
Today we have a super special topic. It is legacy and children. And we have special guests with us to help us with this topic. We have Katherine and Mark Kim from the Mom and Pop podcast. Obviously, you will be the best at giving the overview of your own podcast, but we felt like this is a perfect topic to do a crossover with you because this is like your bread and butter. You guys are young parents and Asians have a certain amount of pressure on us for kids and our futures. So we felt like you guys would be perfect guess for this topic. But why don’t you give your own version of your intro?
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Mark Kim 0:57
Yeah, sure. We started this podcast, Mom and Pop podcast. The idea came from just we always have these interesting conversations. And we always want to start a podcast as a hobby. Just mom and pop just us two. We’re just talking about parenting topics, whether it’s hospital visits, or the first trimester. We recently moved and with a baby, you know, that’s pretty complicated in itself. So yeah, we thought it would be fun to do that. So we’ve been doing that for like, two, three months now. That’s been fun.
Angela Lin 1:25
Katherine, tell us about your baby that you’re holding right now.
Catherine Kim 1:30
Situations a little crazy. Every day is a different rhythm. There’s nothing predictable and there’s no patterns to follow. But Valerie is almost a year old. Her birthday is coming up in August and there’s just a lot of transitions going on with her from like transitioning down from tuneups to one eating solid foods, weaning off of breast milk and going to cow’s milk and all that stuff. So
Angela Lin 1:58
Oh, it’s a whole new world I don’t like just I think Jesse and I are like what are these words they’re saying. So for the listeners just a heads up that like they are real live parents and Valerie is in Catherine’s lap right now so if there are baby noises or people having to be excused here and there just excuse that because this is real life y’all.
Mark Kim 2:23
Yeah, we don’t have a nanny or someone to help us so just please bear with us, yeah?
Angela Lin 2:28
Hashtag millennial.
Jesse Lin 2:30
It’s ok because she’s so cute.
Angela Lin 2:33
So I think the way that we wanted to go about this episode is that obviously you guys are the resident experts for this particular topic because you actually have a living child. My perspective that I’ll be providing is someone who is about to get married and is planning for children in the near future. And because Jesse does not want to partake necessarily in any of the above. He’s going to be our kind of emcee for today and hosting the questions.
Jesse Lin 3:06
Yeah, I’m like the most junior along this path of all you. But I do have a cat so I am raising a living creature.
Angela Lin 3:15
That’s true, maybe you’re ahead of me then because you were already caring for a living being and I’m not.
Jesse Lin 3:59
First off, we wanted to ask you guys why you wanted to start a family.
Mark Kim 4:04
I mean, I think for me personally, like family is a big thing. Not just the idea of having kids, but spending time with my parents spending time with extended family at times. So I guess it felt natural because we had been married for like 3-4 years and also seemed like the next step. In a sense, I don’t think there was like a aha moment it was kind of more of a this is what’s next we both want this. And it feels like right, like timing wise and like, financially wise,
Catherine Kim 4:31
I’ll say that for me. My parents worked all day always working around the clock. So that left me like home alone, quite often. And I just felt like kind of lonely growing up and always wishing that I had a bigger family especially because my brother’s seven years older than me. So I always thought like, I want my family situation to be way different from, you know, what I had grown up with, and I thought, somehow my life would be a little bit more fuller If you know I just had children of my own.
Jesse Lin 5:02
So Mark, you mentioned like, you guys didn’t really have a moment where you were like, We know we want to have kids. It was just kind of like series of things coming together. That being said, like, was there a point where you’re like, Okay, like we’re now this far into our marriage? Do we feel like we’re ready to embark on the next step? And if so, like, what was kind of the driving force behind that?
Mark Kim 5:25
Yeah, financially wise, I think we wanted to make sure that made sense. And I think health is always a thing. So you know, not wanting to wait too long to have children. That’s something that we considered as well.
Catherine Kim 5:37
I think as a kid, you always think like, oh, I want to be a young parent. So I’m gonna get married at like, 22 and then have a kid like 24. And then, you know, you never like consider the career aspects, right? I think especially with our generation, and there’s this huge emphasis of going to like grad school and then getting like an actual paying salary. There were career milestones that we had to hit and In order to feel like let me get to a place in my career where if I had to raise children for a little bit, I could come back to my career without having to start all over again. And then kind of like fight for my job back.
Jesse Lin 6:15
When you guys finally realize you’re like, Okay, cool, like, we’re ready to do this. Like we’re ready to have a baby. Who were the first people that you told?
Catherine Kim 6:25
Oh, good question. I think it was Mark’s mom, my mother in law. Because I’m whipped by her.
Mark Kim 6:42
Yeah, but that is true. One of the first people we told after we found out was my mom and my dad. I don’t know if he was there. Okay, so
Catherine Kim 6:50
I actually had an approach to telling people when I was ready, I saw it. I don’t remember who was the first person and I was like, if I just casually tell people then maybe I’ll be less stressed out about the fact that I’m trying.
Angela Lin 7:03
I actually do remember Catherine very casually telling me that you guys are gonna try soon, because she and I went on a road trip together and yeah, she was like, this is gonna be so fun because it’s gonna be like my last time to binge before we’re gonna have kids I was like what? Okay. Catherine. What was the biggest surprise that you had during the birthing process that you did not expect prior?
Catherine Kim 7:35
I really badly wanted to go through vaginal labor. But since Valerie was breached, I had no options. I had to do c-section like they always say c-section is a major surgery. And it’s exactly – like I was surprised to figure that that that it really was like a major surgery, because the whole process of it is really jarring. You don’t imagine giving birth to a baby in a real surgical room. So it’s just like bright lights everywhere and you feel like you’re on this TV show about to get like, like cut. But then, um, the surgery only took like five minutes, and then they glue you back together, which is like another two minutes. And it just happened so fast. Even though it’s a scary process, you have to be like super positive and keep telling yourself positive things because there’s no good and kind of scaring yourself or stressing out about it. And I keep telling like friends who are pregnant, like I’m like, just stay positive, like you don’t want to be stressed out and you don’t want to think of all these outlying stories.
Angela Lin 8:43
Mark, how about you as the non birth giver? What was the biggest surprise that you had about that process?
Mark Kim 8:51
So the process is so weird, like I literally walk in the room sit next to her and then five minutes later the baby’s born. I’m like, just happened. Just hear a baby crying. Yeah, it’s kind of like 10 feet away cuz they took the baby out like that come here and cut the umbilical cord. I’m like, Wait, what? What is happening? Like, like, okay, I’ll cut it. And then it doesn’t hurt until like, an hour or two later. I’m like, oh my gosh does happen like wow, that’s our baby, you know, like, so c-section is just like a weird experience. Very weird.
Unknown Speaker 9:27
Hey Catherine, one question I have for you because I – like Mark you mentioned one of the factors for why you guys decided it was time was like, biological right for Catherine and like, obviously that drives a lot of my thinking because I’m now on your guys’s age when I’m not pregnant yet, right? But I haven’t had that point in my life where I’m like, I have baby fever and I’m like, oh my god. Babies are so cute and I need to have a baby. And I don’t know if that’s a real thing. Like, if you had baby fever at some point, I was like, this is the time or if you’re just like, no, this is just practicality.
Catherine Kim 10:06
I think I had enough mutual friends that had young children where I’m like, well, gosh, I’m really getting older, and they’re gonna, it’s gonna be so nice for them. They’re gonna be nice and young when their children are graduating from high school and don’t get to enjoy retirement like you know, so it was a combination of the biological factor but when I I did have enough like, friends with children where I did, I did get that baby fever a bit, especially because my sister in law is our age 30 and she had already had a kid at that point. And then there was definitely like in-law pressure to add my brother to everyone was like everybody has a baby in our families. Like you guys are the last one.
Jesse Lin 10:50
Once you guys got married, what was it like? Like were your folks kind of just like on you on having the children next.
Mark Kim 10:57
I think like my parents or my mom, especially she like really values financial stability. So until that was something that we felt like we had and felt comfortable, like she would not push it. So she’ll say stuff like, Oh, you know, you got to make sure you get your masters. Yeah, it wasn’t a pressure right away. Maybe we didn’t hear it until like a few months or a year to a year before we actually start trying. We felt some pressure, but not that much right?
Catherine Kim 11:25
I disagree. So I don’t know if this is necessarily an Asian thing or a Korean, that when it’s a circle of just women like you, you can imagine, like your elder motherly figures kind of like, hey, it’s about time, like you’re turning thirty. And in comparison to like our other family members, we were a bit more financially established so everyone kind of kept prodding at me like, hey, your life is nice. Like you both have have incomes and you can support a child obviously financially, like why haven’t you been talking about it? And I think another weird thing that came up was like, we could have mutual friends and then they tell us like, hey, your brother and sister-in-law was asking us when you guys are gonna have a kid and I’m like, well, that’s odd. Like, why wouldn’t you just ask this directly but yeah, I didn’t know like, I feel like every I felt like everyone tiptoed around us for sure family wise. But my mom was super aggressive and she was kind of like, you’re turning 30 and I’m getting you this oriental medicine and it’s gonna like make your eggs fertile.
Jesse Lin 12:47
You know, based off of the pressure that you guys are kind of felt. What do you guys think of this idea of Asian families pressuring their children to carry on this like legacy like you have to have a blood related child kind of above all as kind of a way to respect and honor your parents and like your larger family.
Angela Lin 13:07
Pass down your last name and all that.
Mark Kim 13:10
So I have an older brother. So technically he’s the one that would carry the family line. So they had a daughter first, and then they had a son. So it’s like, whoa, okay. I think it was a little like there was meaning behind it, because my dad is the only one in his family that had sons. So my brother having a son, it was sort of like, I don’t think we talked about it. But it was sort of a, you know, like, okay, we have that that happened. So that’s cool.
Catherine Kim 13:38
I definitely remember your brother at one point was like, I need to have a son because him being the only like the oldest son of the only son to have a son blah, blah, blah. He actually had to fly to Korea to hold your grandmother or grandfather his portrait in their funeral procession And I think he felt the weight of being the the legacy. I mean, he has a lot of pride and being that guy in the family. Us being the younger children, we never realized like that that’s a thing. And that people really care about it. But I do remember your brother placed a lot of importance in that. I also remember, my dad had like, growing up, told me like, you’re the girl so you’re not carrying my family name, which means you’re not entitled to like whatever I need in this life or whatever. But when I got married, my dad was like, hey, I hear like people are keeping their maiden name and their last name, and I think he was feeling pretty proud of me at that point. And he was like, why don’t you go with Chang-Kim and I was like, that sounds like shank him. No sexy as it sounds, I needed to kind of neutralize my name.
Unknown Speaker 15:09
The girl piece is funny and I think I relate to that. But I feel like it was always known that like you’re gonna get married off so like you don’t carry on the family name. So you’re not you’re like somewhat lesser to that point, right. But for me it was interesting because I feel like my importance changed when my brother came out as gay, because that like shifted a lot of things in their minds because he’s also seven years older than me, but he’s the eldest and he’s the son. So he theoretically is supposed to, like propel forward the Lin family into the future. But I think they had like a very narrow view of what that means, like passed down the family name, and they’re like, well, you’re not going to have kids of your own like blood kids. From there they’re like Angela, you you’re the only one who’s gonna like have children that are biologically ours of like grandkids so then there is this like newfound pressure on me even though I was like somewhat discounted because my last name was gonna change. But like because of the blood factor, they were like, well now you’re our only hope.
Catherine Kim 16:19
Yeah, definitely a real thing. And I I’ve heard of a few friends of mine who had some like the same situation as yours. And even with my brother, my mom, kind of like his wife wasn’t about well, now ex wife wasn’t about to have children or get pregnant, because she was really scared about it and like, just didn’t want one and then my mom kind of forced her to go through IVF or not forced her to but she was like, if I’m going to get pregnant, then I’m going to get like IVF done and my mom was like, like, I’ll foot the bill. As long you have a kid in our name, like, I’ll pay whatever it takes to make sure kid comes out.
Angela Lin 17:05
Kind of crazy. Why do you think Asians are so obsessed with like propelling our name forward?
Unknown Speaker 17:13
I think there’s a fear a little bit of like the family being forgotten, because there’s like this cyclical expectation that there will always be someone there to be like, thinking of the family, venerating the family, like carrying on the fact that the family exists. And when the name disappears, I feel like a part of that disappears, right? Like you no longer belong to this line of people who stretch back to like, however long ago, it just kind of vanishes. So, I think there’s definitely some, at least from my perspective, I feel like there’s some fear around that that people will just forget, like all these ancestors and forefathers and all that.
Angela Lin 17:49
Yeah, kind of reminds me of in Coco the movie when they’re like, Well, once the last person living on earth doesn’t remember you, you’re like forgotten forever from this world.
Catherine Kim 18:00
You know, just as the perspective of being someone’s child, I remember my mom kind of pushing me to be great at piano, like prodigy status at piano so that she could write books about and get famous. My mom was kind of greedy in that sense. But also, I think it was absolutely what Jesse was explaining right now that some there’s something in her that was like, I don’t want to be forgotten. I want to be remembered for something great. So while I’m saying that I don’t feel that way with Valerie, like I don’t want to push her into doing anything that she doesn’t want to do, you know?
Angela Lin 18:41
I’m curious how you are thinking about perpetuating the Korean tradition with Valerie in terms of both like, the language as well as any traditions, customs, rights, those kinds of things. Like how important is that to you in passing those on to her?
Mark Kim 19:02
I feel like it’s important to keep some of it as much as possible, right? Like, I’ve had to kind of expect her to speak Korean to us because we don’t speak Korean. Her Korean is actually going to be probably pretty terrible, but, you know, hopefully she’ll still be able to communicate with her grandparents. Hopefully, you know, there’ll be times where when we celebrate something like Korean, like New Year’s Chinese New Year’s, we do that and eat like this rice cake soup. New Year’s, we also do like the bowing to the elders and you know, showing them honor and respect something like that, even though that’s not something we might have thought too deeply about when we were little, like now I appreciate it more. So that’s something we would want to, you know, like teach her and keep that going. You know, I also want to be able to travel to Korea and like have her hopefully she’ll appreciate stuff like that, you know?
Catherine Kim 19:52
I also have like fun memories of going back to Korea because my mom is from the countryside, and I loved Feeling similar immersed in the Korean culture. But I realized that that would be unrealistic for Valerie because I don’t even keep in touch with my cousins in Korea. So I do want to put her in like Korean, like traditional Korean dancing like not Kpop dancing, but I hope that I can at least do some thing to make sure that she has a sense of identity within the Korean culture.
Jesse Lin 20:27
As you mentioned, raising a child is a very difficult thing. And we kind of – Angela and I have discussed before – that there are like many life things that we feel like our parents did not fully prepare us for. So when you guys did have the baby? Do you feel like your parents were able to impart like any helpful things?
Mark Kim 20:46
Yeah, you know, I can’t think of anything specific that they taught us or taught me. Yeah, I would say it’s more like implicit lessons. You know, like my dad always wants us to eat together to for dinner together. Every night, you know, like, there was no eating by yourself at the computer or TV or whatever. It’s like, no meal times are family time. Just so you can at least take a break from our busy lives and so something that we picked up so we don’t even now when we eat we usually eat together even though the baby’s there and we’re like, kind of juggle eating and feeding or taking care of her. So that’s something that maybe I picked up.
Catherine Kim 21:26
I feel like you’re coming from a male perspective. From day one of when Valerie was first born, it was like a nightmare of like so many different kinds of advice, like I had just, like delivered her and I remember holding her and my parents saying like put her down. You’re going to teach her a bad lesson of being too dependent on you. You’re not going to let her cry it out. She’s going to like want to be in your arms all the time. And like, it was like day one. I remember my cousin in law was like, kind of like, hey, brace yourself, because you’re gonna get advice from your mom and your mother in law that’s gonna like break your pride in ways you never knew that was going to happen.
Jesse Lin 22:22
Did your parents share anything like superstitious things you should like avoid when raising a child or like that you should be aware of while raising a child.
Catherine Kim 22:31
Oh my gosh, this one’s a weird one. And I don’t think it’s that weird but my mom kept telling me to take my temperature. Because when your body temperature is like when your body is ovulating, apparently it like peaks, like a higher temperature or something weird with the temperature fluctuation so I don’t know if that’s like a an Asian thing, but like it’s out there. And I got weirded out because I know she bought me a thermometer stick up my vajayjay or…
Angela Lin 22:59
Oh I thought you meant like you’re general body temperature..
Mark Kim 23:10
I don’t remember if this was like right before she was born or right before we got married but I think like it’s a thing. Probably an Asian like you don’t want to go to like a funeral or something that’s like negative or you know like something sad or depressing right before like a happy event because that will bring that bad juju bad voodoo or whatever bad vibe? So it was either our wedding or but anyway, my mom didn’t go to like an important like my mom my grandma’s funeral because it was in Korea. I think it was like a month a few weeks before our wedding and it was just like, like she didn’t want to over stress her body. And I think it was like, part of the reason like oh, we don’t want to go to a funeral right before someone’s wedding.
Catherine Kim 23:56
When Mark’s cousin passed away, everyone did like one more last goodbyes, they let everyone kind of say farewell to her and I remember my other cousin had a baby and and our autn was like, you can’t bring the baby in. There’s something in the Asian culture where you know babies and, and death like I don’t even think that babies are allowed at funerals, maybe?
Angela Lin 24:20
Maybe it has something to do with both being too close to, like the portal of life opening and closing, I guess.
Jesse Lin 24:31
So let’s talk a little bit about Valerie. Did you guys give her a Korean name? We did her Korean name’s Eun-Ha. It just means galaxy. So I know like Korean culture, like there’s two different options of like how to come up with names. It’s either like go with just a regular Korean name, no Chinese meaning Chinese characters. And then there’s the other option of having like Chinese characters that like give a different meaning to the person’s name. But yeah, we picked Eun-Ha because her cousin is Min-Ha her other cousin at Yoon-Ha. So we’re like, oh, let’s keep the HA syllable like consistent with her two girl cousins probably. And then we just liked it. We were like, oh, it sounds pretty.
You guys just like kind of figured out what you wanted and picked it based off of like how it sounded? There wasn’t like a more elaborate process of finding someone to help do that for you?
Mark Kim 25:22
For guys or for sons, there usually is more of a process.
Catherine Kim 25:26
It’s kind of elaborate and basically your tribal surname. So like Mark is Kim, and there’s like a million different Kim clans and according to his clan it like depends on what generation he is in, that will decide like one of the syllables of his name. So if Valerie were to have been born as a boy, she would have had Jin in her name.
Jesse Lin 25:51
And speaking of names when you pick the English name for her, did your parents have any opinions on that?
Catherine Kim 25:58
Oh my gosh. Yes, my mother. If we had a sudden I was thinking, oh, maybe Joshua because Josh is kind of cute. And she goes, oh, that’s too common. No, it’s too many Joshua Kim’s in this world. I’m like, okay, like, what’s your idea? She’s like, well, I was thinking if you have a girl, maybe you can name her Grace, Grace Kim. Excuse me. I’m about to slap a hoe here.
Angela Lin 26:45
So we’re gonna move into our fortune cookie closing section because we always like to end on a sweet treat. I think you’ve already imparted a ton of knowledge about birthing and raising kids that certainly Jesse and I knew nothing about but what we thought would be a fun close is if each of you wanted to give one tip that everyone should know about raising a baby that you’ve learned in this past year.
Mark Kim 27:15
I think my tip would be like, well, maybe kind of two tips like your mileage may vary. And what I mean by that is like your experience and your kids experiences like can be totally different from other people. So don’t get too caught up in like comparing our my, why is my kid not XYZ yet, or why is she sleeping, you know, like less than this or whatever. So just to kind of accept that everyone’s so different, you’re different and your baby’s different, and you’re not going to be perfect. So yeah, just try to be flexible and kind of roll with the punches. You know, a roll with it type of thing.
Angela Lin 27:51
Ok, Catherine?
Unknown Speaker 27:52
Super cliche, be kind of yourself, huh? Cuz you’re always gonna find yourself like trying to like compare comparing you as a parent to other parents and at the end of the day because every child is different, like don’t beat yourself up over things like oh your baby’s not sleeping through the night or you know whatever like you’re not feeding your baby right or whatever and like if you keep feeding yourself into all the negativity then you can’t be your best self every day. So I would say and sleep when you can.
Angela Lin 28:26
Catherine Have you thought about becoming a mom Instagram influencer? Because I feel like if you put up motivational quotes out every day, you’d get a ton of followers
Mark Kim 28:38
Be kind to yourself
Catherine Kim 28:40
That’s the dream for a lot of mom like Facebook mommies out there, including this one. I’m reading like news feed things for moms. What job can I do to work from home but watch my kid at the same day, like on the same time and I’m like Instagram influencing?
Angela Lin 29:02
Well now, every job kind of. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us, like I said, very informative because we know nothing about this entire world so great to hear from your real life experience. Do you want to give any final plug for your podcast? Where can people find Mom and Pop podcast?
Mark Kim 29:25
So we haven’t figured out all our marketing. But I think if you Google Mom and Pop podcast, we should be on the top 25 hits up there. Google that Mom and Pop podcast and you should be able to find us on Spotify or iTunes and I forgot to mention, but we are just a mom and pop trying to figure out this parenthood thing. That’s what our podcast is about.
Angela Lin 29:50
That’s your tagline, huh? I feel like I hear it in every episode.
Mark Kim 29:53
Yeah, we start with that every episode, just a mom and pop.
Jesse Lin 29:58
Well, thanks again you guys are joining for those listeners. Obviously you can’t see but they were amazingly juggling the baby in the background and recording this. So it was amazing to watch while also recording this.
Mark Kim 30:12
We have to talk about this on our next pod: recording a podcast with the baby, cause we usually do it when she’s sleeping, but this is the first time we’ve done it.
Angela Lin 30:21
Yeah, this is real life. Yeah. Okay people if you like to this episode or if you have experience as a young parent or you have questions for young parents, please write us in at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com. That “you’re” is Y-O-U-R-E, maybe we’ll get our resident experts Mark and Katherine to reply to some of your top questions. So let us know. And as always, please please please rate us five stars on Apple podcast so that we can keep getting that love. Come back next week for a new episode as always.