In the past few days, many people have discussed a post on the Internet, what do they think about the fact that a girl who has sponsored 8 years to become a housewife?
Chizuko Ueno and Reiko Yuyama's new book, Happy Class, answers this question just that.
In the post, the sponsor's mother said, "This girl is smarter than you", as Reiko Yuyama said in the conversation, "I think the turning point for women is also to find a way to use structure to eat sweetness".
Chizuko Ueno said, "Although you can also use the structure to eat some sweetness, you have to suffer more later." Overall, I don't think it's cost-effective. ”
I want to talk about what the "sweetness" and "bitterness" that this girl chose so much will be separately.
First of all, she will indeed get some financial "sweetness", some enjoyment that she has not had, such as luxury bags and luxury tours mentioned in the post.
She was born in a rural area, her family did not even have money for her education, but it is conceivable that the property and love she received from her native family were almost zero, and as an adult, she wanted to cross classes through marriage and obtain economic shelter, which is still uncommon among women today.
A German scholar once told me that I had never seen a country that attached as much importance to education and marriage as China. These two means are still important ways to achieve class mobility today.
In this case, a rural woman with little resources and social support chose to pander to a man's preferences — young and beautiful and fertile — to share his resources.
The "sweetness" she can enjoy is that a large family will provide her with financial support, so that she has no worries about food and clothing, and there is also financial support for childcare, which to a certain extent to resist risks in her future life - after all, for some girls, they can feel satisfied if they can live in a mansion and get into a luxury car.
Women with few social resources and low social structural positions want to weave a safety net for themselves through a materially strong marriage, if it is really as she wishes, after giving birth (the post says: because the man is anxious to have children, so she is actively preparing for pregnancy), marrying into a wealthy family can be regarded as as she wishes.
The girl in this post reminds me of an emotional blogger who took Weibo by storm five or six years ago, Yawawa, who advocated good marriage and advocated that women gain the favor of men through conservative behavior. She encourages women to find single-minded men (even if it's ugly) who are willing to buy them a house, add names to their title deeds, and spend money on them. Those who believe that the choice of female college students in the post is not wrong, like Ayawawa, believe that women should not care about structural inequality between men and women, but seek to maximize their own material interests in existing structures.
However, due to limited information, it is unknown whether the girl received treatment such as a marriage room with a name.
Chizuko Ueno and Reiko Yuyama's new book "Happy Class"
Let's talk about the "suffering" she may suffer after marriage, especially after giving birth to children.
What happens when fate changes? First of all, getting married is not everything, and the functions of childcare and pension are borne within the family, specifically, most of them are borne by the new daughter-in-law, that is, her.
Even Li Lianglei, who perfectly "married" the famous artist Wang Leehom, has already allowed us to see the real life of these bright-looking noblewomen who are actually devastated.
The first "suffering" is that the pressure of being a mother is extremely high, in such a family the child is greater than the mother, and the status of the mother is determined by the child. In the family of a noblewoman, the gender division of labor is very fixed - it is often the husband who works outside the home, earns the top income, and supports the material life of the family, while the childcare work is done by the mother. And because the family has many resources, the child must be outstanding by default, otherwise, it is the mother's fault. After becoming a mother, I have to invest more time and energy in parenting, and I will no longer have my own time. But even so, what they can do is still insignificant in the entire family. She needs to do her best to fulfill the motherhood expected by society, including raising excellent children, and has to be involved in the strange circle of being a perfect mother, which is behind the huge time cost of more than ten years, which is also what Chizuko Ueno said "more suffering".
The second "suffering" is the lack of right to dispose of property. Ordinary women who marry into wealthy families find it difficult to directly control financial power. Men also rely on this to make women obey. For example, they can decide whether to give luxury goods or not, whether to let their wives enjoy luxury vacations, and even social activities, whether the woman's family can participate, etc.
In the Japanese drama "First Love", the heroine Yahidei Noguchi married a brain doctor and interrupted her studies, seemingly married into a wealthy family, and in the end, her mother-in-law's humiliation of her mother and indifference from her husband made her choose to divorce and leave the house, and could only drive a taxi to make a living.
"First Love" by Yahide Noguchi
The third "suffering" is that if you divorce, you may fall into poverty. Housewives are engaged in unpaid labor, whether they can get the corresponding subsidies depends on the conscience of the other party, if divorced, the legal compensation for household chores is also very small, so women divorce is easy to be penniless, resulting in a sharp decline in the economic level after divorce, considering the disparity in economic conditions, the custody of children is difficult to belong to the woman.
The fourth "suffering" is that there is a high probability of enduring the husband's infidelity. Marrying into a wealthy family, the male in this kind of marriage can break the restraints of marital fidelity at any time. Women, on the other hand, can't make mistakes. Too many books and film and television dramas tell why noble ladies do not live easily at all, the sense of power is very weak, and they may not be as good as ordinary people who make money themselves, and real life is often more bloody than film and television dramas.
In other words, this girl seems to be "married" at first glance and temporarily tastes a little sweet, but this unequal marriage may have even more repercussions for her. In particular, she went so far as to tell her sponsor that she was going to be a housewife with joy, which undoubtedly put herself in a very risky situation, not to mention that the girl in the post is a woman who has no family of origin and will be homeless once divorced.
In short, marrying into a wealthy family is not everything, and men are not fools. You think you are "seizing an opportunity to change your destiny", but all the gifts of fate have already been secretly marked with a price.