A man came up to complain his wife gave up her decent job and stayed home which wasted her Master degree qualification. Her job was at a local government subordinate company, good welfare and average salary, though she may feel bored to do very easy work every single day, plus she was not comfortable to deal with complext relationships between colleagues.
I can see the man loves his wife and tolerate her request for now. Why women have to work? In feudal times, women’s workplace is home; it is only in modern times, a family needs both husband and wife work to run family’s finance. If women stay home, kids can have more attention and care; husband can have clean home, warm dinner after a day’s hard work. A lot of benefits. Maybe less traffic jam, less waste of oil and less carbon footprint, since less women join the morning and evening rush hour.
Frankly, very few Chinese men would let his wives stay home forever. If so, very likely, this woman is poorly treated mentally, for instances, taking blames or fists when husband fails his job; or her family has intrusion from other woman. A lot of families, calculate each member’s economic value, and treat each other accordingly. For instance, if wife earns bigger salary, she makes the rules, and her mother-in-law will try to like her.
Some men who want wives to work, claim work makes women confident, not isolated and confined at home and contribute to family.
Women who have Master’s degree or higher, hope to marry a rich, competent and kind man, so as to stay home and enjoy life. Many responders criticised this though as a failure of our education industry.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Brian // Apr 24, 2008 at 6:19 pm
This is an interesting story, Admin. I want to tell you about a Chinese student I know at my university who got married and wanted to bring his wife to the US. She couldn’t get a visa so he told me that he was going back to try one more time and if she didn’t get the visa he was going to quit school and move back to China. He said that he loved her so much that he wasn’t going to stay in the US if he couldn’t be with his wife. I thought that was a very romantic thing to do. I really admired him for it.
I didn’t see him for a long time so I always thought she was denied the visa and he decided to stay in China. But about two years after I saw him back on campus. I asked him if his wife finally got the visa. He then told me that she divorced him when he quit school because that meant she could never immigrate to the US. The only reason why she was with him was to get a green card.
He then said that he’d come back and was studying business with engineering “because money was all women care about.”
I felt so sorry because he was a really, nice guy. I was surprised though that he could marry someone without suspecting this was her intention.
2 Rick in China // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:48 am
@Brian
RE: The Story
I’d like to inform your friend of a style of music called Rap. There’s a song which, had he listened to and believed in, would have changed his life.
It’s titled “Treat ‘em like a prostitute” by Slick Rick.
3 admin // Apr 25, 2008 at 4:07 am
True love and lasting marriage is rare thing in modern world.
Unlike UK, women can choose to work around house, Chinese household is not used to fulltime housewife lifestyle yet.
Many still think, a highly educated woman give up career to stay home, is a failure or waste of talent.
4 Rick in China // Apr 27, 2008 at 11:09 pm
@Admin
It’s not a failure or waste of talent, it’s a raw disgusting factor of dependence and inability to take charge of one’s own life. Some men prefer the dominance it gives them from ‘bringing in the bacon’, others greatly respect a woman who is capable of standing on her own two feet even though the circumstance may not require her to. Personally I make enough money to support myself and a family in a comfortable lifestyle, but, I wouldn’t have any interest in the type of girl who *desires* to stay home and lay around the house, cook, clean..in fact, my last real girlfriend thought it’s what I wanted - so I hired a full-time maid thinking it would force my gf into boredom at home and into doing what she seemed to once enjoy (career) rather than what I consider “low-level labor “….my queen doesn’t wash the floor….it didn’t change the situation - and my queen quickly became my backpack. Successful men don’t require backpacks, we require equals.
I’d like to add career in my eyes does not have any relationship to amount of money earned - it has to do with the satisfaction of providing value in some way, in any way. Volunteering can be a career. If you don’t require money in life, surely hobbies or volunteer work which you truly enjoy can substitute, but when all you want to do is cook and clean, that spells out the personality-type which doesn’t earn much respect in my eyes. I am NOT saying I don’t respect it period, I don’t respect it when it’s not necessary. My mother did all of that type of work (but also worked, mind you) and had 3 boys - I greatly respect her. I just don’t think a woman should seek a rich man so she can lounge..and in China you know how cheap maid services are - there’s no excuse for a lazy slack scraggly backpack just because she’s smart and attractive and may produce quality offspring.
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