Theme: Women should only stay at home and look after their family?
6/21/2002
When China was in her old-social-system period, the standard to value a housewife was quite strange. In people's mind, a woman who doesn't often step out of home will be considered a loyal wife. So, we could hardly see women, especially housewives, who gather together, talking and laughing in the street. An old saying shows it very clearly. The general idea is in that period women could just hear the voice of their neighbors but never meet them even through their lives. This is an extremely example, indeed, but it gives us a general image of women's position in the society. People have definite women as babysitters, housekeepers or sometimes even a waiter for the husband.
But if let's put an eye on the history of Japan , we can also find that women's position is also quite low in the society. Although working at home or not is not the standard to scale the position of women in a society, we can know one side of people's thinking on women's job. Maybe Korean women also do the same after they were married. As most of Japanese women, they give up their jobs and stay at home, taking care of children, doing housework. Except doing shopping or visiting friends, they spend most of the time at home. Because of the influence of the history, some women also keep such a concept that it is all their responsibility to take care of the family.
The time is walking forward; the old society has gone forever. In a new time, women were not only working at home as a housekeeper, they work in every part of the society, do the same as men and give large attributions to the society. The word Man and woman are equal is the best prove. So women have got their jobs, women cover the half of the sky, their role in the society is changing.
In nowadays, I think my thinking of the dividing of work at home is influenced by the new idea of man and woman. I do not assent to tie women at home, just for the house cleaning, baby caring and so on. They should have their jobs they love to do; they should have their aims in their lives even though they hold a life together with men. They should be much more independent than before.
At home, I think all works should be shared to both of the wife and the husband, including taking care of babies, cleaning the house and so on. Doing everything for the husband will surely make the husband feel glad but sharing the burden for the wife will build up a better relationship between the members of the family doubly.
As almost every female citizen in China has her job, so the most common situation of family is both of the parents work but nobody has time to take care of children. That's a new problem in the nowadays society---- women spend too much time on work but little time on children. So in the most important period of child (almost at 1-3 year(s) old), the child was put into kindergarten or took care by the grandparents. The children accept more influence from different people but not only but their parents. Sometimes, some extremely samples show that, the lack of care from parents will cause much more problems such as the increasing crime rates of youth. This problem is quite visualized in developed country now.
I don't agree with making women just stay at home, but I also don't agree with that mother keep a long distance from children just because of her busy work. So take the balance. That will be the perfect way to deal with both of the job and family, I think.
Thank you very much!
Last update: 01/18/2004 23:09