First child

Summary

First Child (2022) follows Jeong-ah, a professional woman trying to rebuild her career one year after giving birth to her first child. Returning to work proves far more complicated than simply resuming her old routine: childcare arrangements are unstable, expectations at home remain largely unchanged, and the demands of her job leave her caught between professional ambition and the constant needs of motherhood. Her husband cares for their child as well, but the film closely examines how responsibility and sacrifice are often distributed unevenly within a family. As Jeong-ah searches for a workable balance, she must also navigate the people who surround her, including family members, workplace colleagues, and childcare providers whose involvement reflects different assumptions about what a “good mother” should be. The child remains at the center of every decision, while Jeong-ah’s own identity and desires gradually become harder to separate from the roles imposed on her. Rather than presenting motherhood as either purely fulfilling or purely oppressive, the film offers a restrained, realistic portrait of a woman under sustained pressure. Its central themes include the unequal burden of caregiving, the difficulty of maintaining a career after childbirth, the social ideal of “having it all,” and the compromises demanded of women in contemporary society. Quiet and observant, First Child is less a conventional family drama than a pointed examination of how work, marriage, class, and parenthood shape one another.