Recently, a "daddy divorced and received 10,000 yuan in housework compensation" appeared on the hot search, triggering heated discussion among netizens. In 2016, after Mr. Liu married Ms. Wang and had a son, they separated. The child has been living with Mr. Liu, and Ms. Wang only visits occasionally. Mr. Liu filed a divorce lawsuit, demanding compensation of 60,000 yuan from Ms. Wang. In the end, after the judgment of the Miyun District People's Court of Beijing Municipality, Ms. Wang paid more than 10,000 yuan in compensation for housework.
In recent years, reports of divorce domestic compensation cases have not been uncommon. The Civil Code, which came into effect in January 2021, clearly stipulates that "if one of the spouses bears more obligations due to the maintenance of children, the care of the elderly, and the assistance of the other party in work, he has the right to request compensation from the other party at the time of divorce".
During the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2022, Wei Zhenling, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and deputy procurator general of the Liuzhou Municipal People's Procuratorate in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, also submitted a proposal proposing that legislation should regard full-time family service as a legal profession protected by law to solve social problems such as low fertility and aging in the mainland.
She also proposed that in order to protect the rights and interests of the returning family to provide full-time services to the family, the government should issue labor subsidies, or family members with financial resources should pay their living expenses and service expenses, or enjoy benefits such as calculating the length of service and social security, or reduce the personal income tax of the employing spouse.
As soon as this proposal was reported, it aroused the attention of all walks of life, and while the three-child policy was fully liberalized, more and more young people carefully chose to have children. Choosing to give up personal career development and return to the family to wholeheartedly "husband (wife) godson" means handing over the right to economic independence and autonomy, which looks more like a big gamble with the future. Today, is it still worth doing to housewife and "cooker"? How to guarantee the party who has more obligations in the marriage and family?
In this regard, xiaoxiang morning newspaper (weChat: xxcbbaoliao) reporter interviewed housewives, researchers of the Academy of Social Sciences and divorce lawyers, gender experts, they each gave their own opinions.
"Worked as a full-time housewife for 3 years and recently prepared to find a job"
Xiaoyu, a hubei native, 29 years old, full-time housewife
In 2014, Xiaoyu (pseudonym), who graduated from Hunan Polytechnic Institute, went to Beijing to develop. Before returning to Changsha with her husband in 2017, she had been working in new media in Beijing, earning about 7,000 yuan a month.
△ Small fish discusses the pros and cons of full-time housewives push image source respondent b station screenshot
After returning to Changsha, Xiaoyu found that changsha's job market was not as active as Beijing's, and there was little room for choice. She is somewhat unsuitable for the working environment in Changsha.
At the beginning of 2019, Xiaoyu decided to leave his job and try to transform into self-media. Xiaoyu's mother's family is in business, and her education has been "free-range" since childhood, and her husband also supports her choice. In August 2019, Xiaoyu accidentally became pregnant, and the work of self-media was intermittent, and in 2019, not a penny was earned.
After giving birth to her daughter in 2020, Xiaoyu's self-media account began to have some income, averaging 3,000 to 5,000 yuan per month, and she paid pension insurance and medical insurance as a flexible employment person.
After taking the child at home, the little fish consciously rest less time than when they go to work. However, as the UP owner of the B station living area, Xiaoyu's parenting life is also part of the main content of its self-media account, which has attracted the resonance of many married women.
She has also taken some videos exploring the topic of housewives, discussing the pros and cons of being a housewife with fans, and most netizens do not admit to supporting being a housewife, or even think that this is a profession.
But Xiaoyu believes that the profession of housewife is very important, because young children need companionship, and this job must always be undertaken by someone. "Most people don't have to do other work while having children, but they just stop."
Xiaoyu and her husband's finances are not separated, the family's annual income is about 200,000 to 300,000, and they belong to an ordinary well-off family in Changsha. She did not calculate the price she paid or the economic value of the housework undertaken by housewives.
Roughly speaking, she is now equivalent to two jobs, "senior childcare sister-in-law at least more than ten thousand a month." My income from self-media is also to buy things for my children. ”
Xiaoyu has also paid attention to some divorce cases, and found that housewives do not receive much compensation in the end, "From a legal point of view, the labor paid by housewives is not of much value, which will lead to women becoming more and more reluctant to return to the family and unwilling to have children." ”
Despite insisting on the value of a housewife's labor, she perceives the subtle feelings that this identity brings to her. When she doesn't have an income, she feels insecure.
"After giving birth, the figure has changed, the career has stagnated, and you have to accept the strange eyes of outsiders, and you will feel that there is no benefit at all to bringing your child at home, except for being good to your child." Xiaoyu is glad that his self-media career is still doing well, and his friends and classmates around him will not comment on the lives of others at will, "It is still a pity that there is really no income at home, or that he will directly be a full-time housewife after graduation." ”
I have heard that some housewives have encountered cases of their husbands changing their hearts, making it difficult for Xiaoyu to escape the pressure and anxiety of survival, and in the face of an uncertain future, Xiaoyu has thought about the worst-case scenario, "to give yourself some confidence to survive." ”
Since the media has an income, Xiaoyu's insecurity and anxiety are less, and she also found that the housewife's voice is smaller, "after all, the economic base determines the superstructure." ”
There are many women around Xiaoyu who are forced to stop working due to pregnancy. The ideal state is to do a side job while taking children, but it is a very difficult road, most women are difficult to do, "some female friends are a little scared when they think about giving up their jobs for childbirth." ”
Sometimes, Xiaoyu will also discuss with her family the dilemma that childbirth brings to married women, but it is rarely understood and recognized. Because in the cognition of the previous generation, it is a matter of course for a woman to take a child at home after giving birth, and the mother of the small fish is to bring the small fish up while doing business with her husband, and the grandparents of the small fish do not even think that this is a problem.
The first year of childbirth for the little fish feels particularly tired. Although the husband is a freelancer who works from home, he will also take the handle, but the child is naturally more sticky to the mother, and the little fish still undertakes most of the housework, "Maybe from this generation, the parents have to take on the housework, and the situation of the next generation of women has improved." ”
Xiaoyu has also heard of such proposals as the professionalization of housewives. As a housewife, she thinks more realistically — if the husband is working every day to pay the housewife's salary, it may invisibly increase family conflicts, "which is equivalent to returning the pressure of responsibility to the small family, and this kind of promotion is not very meaningful." ”
Although she believes that the possibility is very small, she agrees with the proposal of the state and the government to pay part of the subsidy, which means that the profession of housewife is recognized by the state and society, which is conducive to improving the social status of housewives. ”
As for the amount of subsidies, Xiaoyu believes that it is best to assess according to the financial situation of the region or country, "too high is impossible, too low is meaningless." ”
"It should not be able to reduce a few hundred yuan, but it is still feasible to add such a clause when refunding taxes." She also agreed to reduce taxes for spouses who worked outside the home, and hoped that the state would pay social security and medical insurance to housewives and give housewives the minimum protection.
Considering the economic downturn in recent years, the competition in the self-media industry is fierce. Children will go to kindergarten next year, Xiaoyu also plans to go to work, this year's new house to come down, their own family has not yet bought a car, if you add car loans, "self-media can not do a lifetime, relying on one person to earn money is certainly not enough." ”
△ Xiaoyu's daily life as a full-time housewife Screenshot of the source of the interviewee b station
"To recognize family care as a social labor"
Tang Jun is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The reference to the professionalization of housewives is not very accurate and should be expressed as the professionalization of domestic care. Because the object of care is not only children and the elderly, but also the disabled, seriously ill patients and other groups that need to be taken care of, it is not medical care, mainly life care, with some nursing, rehabilitation.
Care is divided into direct care and indirect care, direct care is the care of people, cleaning, buying vegetables and cooking and other labor is called indirect care.
It is necessary to recognize that this kind of care work is a kind of social work and creates value for society. Now that women retire earlier, it is not idle, but it may help with children at home. Because there is no public service for children aged 0 to 3 in China.
Institutionalized care for children aged 0 to 3 is prone to problems. Because children aged 0 to 3 years do not have any ability to express themselves and protect themselves. Therefore, family care, which was once considered a family affair, is actually a kind of social labor that creates value for society.
Today, the ILO has been advocating that care should be a job. Therefore, many countries pay social wages to those who care for the elderly and children at home, and there are organizations to fight for the rights and interests of housewives, especially in Northern Europe.
In 2018, the National Labour Organization issued the document "Caregiving And Caregiving". The ILO has been advocating for decent employment, and this issue is also included in the broader issue of decent employment.
In fact, housewives pay a lot of labor at home, such as raising children. Now the concept of raising children and preventing the elderly is outdated, raising children is actually for the society, so raising children is actually a kind of social labor. This is already evident.
Since it is social labor, it should be decent, and there should be non-profit organizations in society that support it. First, there is training for caregivers to instill advanced scientific concepts, means and methods.
Second, care for the caregiver. In the face of the elderly and children every day, in fact, caregivers will also have a lot of troubles. For example, the absence of filial piety in front of a long-term sick bed is not entirely a moral issue.
Facing bedridden elderly people all day long, can only do one thing all day, which can also lead to a lot of psychological problems, even depression. Therefore, foreign countries emphasize the need to care for caregivers. If the caregiver has psychological problems, there may be abuse of children and the elderly.
Third, give caregivers a certain amount of financial reward. Because there is a cost to doing anything, caregivers cannot go out to work at home, and they can also pay a certain salary for caring for their families.
Family care is already clear in theory and a hot topic internationally, and our ideas are too old and backward. At present, the mainland is less likely to pay home caregivers. However, pilots can be done in some parts of the country, such as Shanghai, Beijing and Zhejiang, where the economy is strong. After all, this is a question of the future of national and social development, and it has to be considered.
We used to say that the male protagonist is outside the female protagonist, and this set of concepts is very old. Who goes home to take care of the elderly and children, in fact, the couple can also negotiate, there are many grandfathers in Europe. Home care work can not be called a return to the family, in fact, the place of work is only at home, and now there are more people working from home, and online shop owners are working from home.
We should establish a new set of ideas, first understand, and then solve the problem, otherwise the child will not be born. Many women in China are worried about the impact on workplace competitiveness and dare not have children, which is essentially an age or gender discrimination.
As for the scheme of calculating the length of service or paying social security for housewives, the concept of working age in China is becoming more and more weak, and if the housewife has her own income, she can pay social security in the form of flexible employment.
Although the labor force participation rate in Chinese is high, especially for women, Chinese wages are generally not high.
When my parents went out to work when I was a child, it was not a problem for my father to raise three people by himself, but now most of China is a dual-career family, and one person's income cannot support the family at all, some housewives still hold the power of family finances, and the husband takes a small salary back to his wife, which still cannot solve the problem.
Therefore, the proposal of this proposal sounds good, but for most families in the country, the practicality of the husband to pay the housewife is not strong.
It is also necessary to consider the factor of women's independence, they have a salary, even if it is a subsidy issued by the government, after all, it is their own money.
The general direction of this proposal is right, but the concept is very old and should be replaced by advanced ideas. For most families, the more practical measure is the government subsidy, which is also the most popular way in the world.
△ Screenshot of the push content of the small fish discussing the full-time housewife The source of the interviewee b station screenshot
"Paying a full-time party may result in lying flat?"
Zhang Jing, a lawyer at Beijing Lianggao Law Firm and a lawyer in marriage and family affairs
Let me first talk about the background of this proposal: At present, the "Family Education Promotion Law" has been introduced, the policy of two and three children is also advancing, and the low fertility rate of the population is indeed an objective reality.
In the birth and education of children, the expectations and requirements of a family are objectively existent. One person in both men and women has to sacrifice their career prospects for a period of time to pay for the family. This is the need of the entire social environment and background.
Why, today, is it proposed that housework should be paid, monetary, or family compensation? It is because more and more women are reluctant to enter the family and are unwilling to have children.
Because the policy is not friendly, everyone tacitly agrees that it should be women who pay. No one thinks that full-time housewives are valuable and contribute to society.
There is a relatively common cognitive misunderstanding that the husband believes that the achievements of his work are all obtained by his own hard work. It is often overlooked that the wife at home should take care of the children and take care of the family. I didn't realize that the family behind me needed to pay for it to function normally.
And this person can also go out and create value.
Therefore, the first thing to change the concept of housework is paid, is the first step to appeal.
After the implementation of the civil code's domestic work compensation system last year, from the first case of domestic labor compensation until the end of the year, we took stock of the cases of domestic labor compensation for the whole year and found that it was only a symbolic and symbolic comfort payment, far greater than its actual significance.
What are the root causes of the domestic work compensation? The first is to solve the problem that the value of the labor that really pays for the family is something that should be seen.
Second, the payment of housework is only a difference in the division of roles of the family, which also has monetary value.
But for Chinese, the monetization of domestic work is hard to accept. Many people think that the husband pays the wife's housework, everything counts as money, then the family has no human touch. Human feelings are not to take the sacrifices of others to maintain the good, but to respect each other, see each other's efforts, and recognize each other's value. Relationships can only work benignly.
For the work of stay-at-home mothers, Japan, South Korea and Western countries have all been affirmed in different forms. Because they became aware of the problem of declining fertility rates earlier.
As one of the important subjects of childbearing, if women's rights are ignored, it will directly affect the decline in the fertility rate of the population.
Therefore, in Western countries, after divorce, the man must provide for the woman until she remarries. This is a policy implemented by most countries. Because women lose the ability to participate in social competition when they pay for the family, and the ability of husbands who go out to work is improving, there is a huge gap in the middle.
In South Korea and Japan, part of the husband's salary is directly transferred to the wife's account, the proportion in Japan is 50%, and in South Korea, it is 30%.
Women in our country have always been portrayed as bearers of humiliation and selfless giving. Today's women are fully educated, and after entering society, they are not easily seduced by this concept. Because the rewards she receives are so disproportionate and often looked down upon, the man says "I raise you" when he is happy, and becomes "I raise you" when he divorces.
Under the national conditions of our country, I do not agree with the form of salary payment, because the whole social environment has not yet reached that level, and we should slowly let everyone gradually change their concepts to advance. If it is too radical to implement, it is unrealistic.
The system of compensation for domestic work that has been implemented is a very good system, and when it is implemented, it compensates not only for this part of the marriage. The labor of housewives should be seen, affirmed, and presented in a monetized system. More important is the departure of housewives from the workplace, resulting in the loss of competitive future gains when returning to the workplace.
For example, the man starts to take the graduate school, the woman supports the family, serves the child, and earns money to support the man. After the master's and doctoral studies, the man began to be busy, and the woman's salary was not high, and she returned to the family. Two years later, the man said the gap was too big and there was no common language. At this point, the value of the man really begins to appear.
If it is not guaranteed by the system, it is easy to induce moral hazard, and the woman's efforts are also in vain. Who will selflessly support each other in marriage in the future? The risk is too great.
Women should go hand in hand when promoting on the other side, and the gap between the two sides should not be too large. So women should not easily choose to be housewives. After giving birth, women should return to the workplace as quickly as possible. If you do not guarantee your competitiveness in the workplace, you will be resigned and laid off by your family in the future, and you will receive half of the family's common property.
In many divorce cases, in first-tier cities such as Beijing, the compensation for domestic work is given 50,000 yuan. An undergraduate graduate earns more than 50,000 yuan a year.
Therefore, in order for the domestic work compensation to be truly implemented, the gap between the prospects of the housewife who pays for the family and the future career gains lost should be considered, combined with the length of the marriage and the specific circumstances of the payment.
Because the other party who benefits from the full-time party should share the benefit with the full-time party for a certain number of years in the future. In this way, every time he fails a marriage, there is a cost, he has to pay for the previous person who paid, and he can't go into another marriage immediately.
It is best not to use the word housewife, but the housework compensation is aimed at the party who pays for the family. In the past, the idea that housewives were all women, and that men would be ridiculed by others for eating soft rice, was to look down on the full-time party.
Through the guidance and incentive of policies and interests, from the ideological and policy laws and other aspects, the law gives the full-time party a full and highly secure guarantee, so that it thinks that "I really contribute to the country", and there will be no psychological gap between the two sides.
While giving the full-time party a higher social status, it is actually encouraged that both men and women should be involved in giving to the family.
As for the proposal, China is a very humane country. The husband pays the wife a salary, that is the employment relationship, and the wife works for the husband, so if the government pays the full-time party, will it lead to direct lying flat?
This formulation is also prone to male and female antagonisms. Men will also say, then I have a womb and go home and lie flat. Then everyone won't want to go out to work.
Profession does not distinguish between high and low, personal choices are respected, and we affirm the dedication of full-time housewives. At the same time, the protection of housewives, husband and wife property mutual inspection and other supporting measures should also keep up, many cases, husbands earn money to hide, do not tell the wife how much money earned, want to find out the man's income is more difficult than ascending to the sky, housewives claim their rights, may also be backward knowledge, not even a reference value, do not know how to fight for rights and interests.
I have a client who has been a full-time housewife for 10 years and doesn't know how much her husband, who is an airline executive, makes, and the man tells his wife that he is in debt of five or six million. Finally, we calculated that the man's ten-year income is about 30 million.
The root cause is to eliminate gender discrimination between men and women, and 90% of people will default to the full-time role should be female. Women are driven home and have no right to inquire about the real property status of the party who earns money outside, which is to protect the powerful party. Women are exploited by the family to become a free domestic servant.
However, if women do not do a good job of being housewives and come out to "do things", they will be criticized for not fulfilling their family responsibilities. Because of the lack of family roles of the wife and mother, the child has problems and the husband has an affair. The whole attribution is this stereotype.
"Low-income women passively become housewives"
Senior media person, Ph.D. in Sociology Li Sipan
I believe that the deputies to the National People's Congress who put forward the professionalization of full-time housewives should be made from the perspective of their procuratorial work.
She should not only say that the housewife is professionalized, but that full-time home management, or domestic care, is a kind of work that both men and women should (undertake).
Her proposals are mainly on the distribution of family property, with more focus on the distribution within the family. That is, family members at home can share in the salary received by family members who work outside the home, and can also be compensated for housework in the event of divorce.
But the problem is that in the previous divorce case, the compensation for housewives to receive housework for 5 years of marriage was 50,000 yuan.
The case has iconic significance. Although the public does not know the full picture of the incident, if you do so many housework a year and only compensate 10,000 yuan, it will definitely not work. Later, the judge seemed to have explained the case, saying that the distribution of other family property may be satisfactory to the parties.
But there is a problem with this, and I think it is not possible to treat domestic work only as a quasi-market exchange between members of the family.
Housewives are divided into many situations, one is the upper middle class, higher income families, let women be full-time housewives at home, which is the concept of full-time housewives in our imagination.
But in reality, there are many low-income women who become full-time housewives, and by middle-class standards, the money their spouses earn outside is not enough to support a family.
Why do they have to be full-time housewives? Because there are a large number of lower- and middle-class women, their position in the labour market is very unstable, and they do not need jobs based on higher education, strong professionalism and development opportunities. Usually, they may be in a job that is easy to replace in the average small and medium-sized enterprise.
Once you have to take care of two or three children, it is basically unlikely that you will have a stable full-time job with development opportunities. There are still a bunch of problems behind it, such as the birth security mechanism mentioned now, which this group of women can't enjoy.
In addition, the family income is not high, and they have to passively become housewives. The reason they become housewives is not that their husbands have the money to support a large family, or they can support a large family very well. In the event of divorce, the average family of ordinary people does not have much distributable property to compensate for their work for housework.
The suggestions made by this representative were good, but they were very difficult to implement.
In today's society, full-time domestic work means giving up the opportunity to develop your own career, which is a very large opportunity cost. Often, this consideration is based on emotions, and the vast majority of families do not have much capital to compensate for.
Secondly, what the full-time party pays is not compensated by money. For example, housewives can buy insurance for urban residents, but it is still different from the insurance for normal occupations. When a person gives up the opportunity to work outside the home, her social insurance is much more vulnerable.
Therefore, the professionalization of housewives is not a question of distribution within the family, but a question of how society and the state determine this profession.
First of all, if the party who takes care of the elderly or children at home full-time is at home for a lifetime, can their social security be the same as the professional social security of working outside the home? In many countries, long-term care allowances are available for people staying at home full-time, such as the elderly or sick or disabled people in need of care at home, and the government will pay a subsidy to their salary account.
So to treat housewives as a respected profession is not a matter within the family, but the whole social security system, or how the state allocates resources to do it.
Xiaoxiang Morning News reporter Chen Si