Fourfold Joy: Couple Finds Parenting Easier With Four Siblings
The Chosun Ilbo · Oh Ju-bi ·
Fourfold Joy: Couple Finds Parenting Easier With Four Siblings Ahn Mi-jeong and Mohammad Daz share how their childrens camaraderie reduces stress and transformed their lives
On the evening of the 2nd, at an apartment in Deokjeong-dong, Yangju City, Gyeonggi Province. As the door opened and footsteps entered the foyer, the greeting “Hello” echoed four times in succession. Though their heights varied, the smiling faces of the four siblings—Dah (13), Joo-ha (11), Min-ha (8), and Ro-ha (3)—were identical. When asked, “Isn’t raising four children difficult?” by Ahn Mi-jeong (48) and Mohammad Daz (39), the couple waved their hands and said, “There’s absolutely nothing hard about it. With four, parenting is much easier.”
The couple first met in the fall of 2010 through work. Mohammad, the husband, ran a business buying fabrics in South Korea and selling them to Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries. Ahn, the wife, worked in a small trading company that dealt with such businesses. They began dating in the summer of 2011 after Mohammad confessed his feelings. Ahn recalled, “Other buyers would get angry if things didn’t go as planned, but my husband never once lost his temper. He always spoke with a smile, and that’s what made me fall for him.” Mohammad, smiling beside her, added, “She was so beautiful that just seeing her made me smile.”
Marriage was not easy. Mohammad, a Muslim, had cultural differences, such as not eating pork, and both families opposed the union. Overcoming these challenges, the couple exchanged vows at an Islamic mosque in Itaewon in the spring of 2012. Before marriage, Ahn did not particularly like children. She never found babies cute and would think, “How noisy,” whenever she heard a child cry. But everything changed after their first child, Dah. Ahn said, “After getting pregnant with Dah, I suddenly found all the children around me so adorable. If I had known I’d become this fond of kids, I might have married earlier and had a fifth child.”
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