Taegyo and Lived Religion: Exploring Spiritual Practices in Prenatal Care Among Korean Immigrants

Immigrant women's voices and cultures have rarely been recognized by medical and nursing practices, particularly Korean prenatal care, which has not been explored extensively in academia. As a bioethicist familiar with US reproductive care, I have found that existing literature heavily focuses on white-centered perspectives from healthcare providers, overlooking the cultural understandings and daily prenatal practices significant to immigrant patients of color.

Korean immigrants tend to show high religiosity according to the Pew Research data. Lived religion is one of the significant social determinants of health among Korean immigrants. It often influences patients’ behaviors and critical health decisions such as reproductive care decisions. Although Korean immigrants often exhibit high religiosity, as noted by Pew Research, the existing bioethical literature seldom examines the intricate process of meaning-making and immigrants' spiritual prenatal practices.

Currently, a few hundred books have been published to guide taegyo (“prenatal education”) in South Korea, including “Holy Spirit Taegyo,” “Taegyo Food,” “Poetry for Taegyo,” “Origami for taegyo,” “Bible Taegyo Storybook,” “Tora Taegyo,” “40 Week Taegyo QT,” “40 Week Proverb Taegyo,” and “Mom and Dad’s Taegyo Prayer.” Many books that offer guidelines target Christian readers who want to practice spiritual taegyo in Christian contexts. Yet the existing literature does not focus on “lived religion” in many Koreans’ and Korean immigrants’ taegyo experience. Despite conducting a textual analysis of TaegyoSingi by Sajudang Lee (1739-1821) and presenting it at the AAR, my previous study included textual analysis of the taegyo manual and sacred book, but did not include qualitative interview data. In this new study, I intend to analyze thirty semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Korean immigrant women who have undergone pregnancy and childbirth in the US, employing a modified grounded theory approach. Charmaz's social constructivist version of grounded theory will facilitate a systematic representation of interviewees' experiences, highlighting key themes and phenomena within this specific immigrant context.

By exploring the religious and spiritual underpinnings of Korean immigrants’ prenatal care, this study aims to understand how various religious traditions, like Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism, have merged into contemporary taegyo practices. Preliminary research indicates that Protestant Korean immigrants integrate various aspects of taegyo as a spiritual discipline. This qualitative analysis seeks to uncover the everyday religion present in Korean immigrants' taegyo practices. The study highlights the importance of recognizing patients' lived religion to provide optimal reproductive care for immigrant populations of color.