Do not suffer from the disrespect of position, but suffer from the disrespect of virtue; There is no shame in the gang, and there is no shame in wisdom. - "Answering the Question"
In ancient times, due to factors such as backward productive forces, imperfect legal system, and underdeveloped science, many bad habits that are unimaginable to people today have arisen and these bad habits have harmed countless families in the long history. For example, in ancient times, if a drought broke out, the ancients would not think that it was due to the climate, nor would they think that it was the reason for the incomplete water conservancy facilities, but that it was because the dragon king was angry, so they would use boys and girls as tribute, so as to let the dragon king eliminate his anger. This bad habit of using living people as sacrifices has brought irreparable harm to a large number of people, and I will introduce a similar bad habit to you below.
1. Ancient bad habits
Older friends must have heard the phrase "eat out of households", and for some young people, I am afraid they don't quite understand what it means. In fact, this is very simple, if there is no man in a family, then others will call it a "desperate household", because in the feudal concept, only men are considered heirs, and women are to be married, which cannot be counted. And "eating out of households" means that everyone will define them as "out of households", and all the family property will be taken away, and then the women of this family will be forced to a dead end. So in the old days, if there was no man in a family, relatives would be more realistic than strangers.
The behavior of "eating out of households" has a long history, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it has developed to its peak. Originally, legally speaking, the imperial court was to protect personal property, but during that period, the government has always turned a blind eye to this kind of thing. Why is this happening? Because there are too many of them, as the saying goes, the law does not blame the public, although the imperial court also knows that this kind of behavior is not good, but what can they do? I can only watch this happen. Then the question arises, how did ordinary people in ancient times view this kind of behavior?
Second, the reason behind it
First of all, we have to understand how the "desperate household" was born? In an agrarian society, labor is the most important resource, and there is a big gap between women and men in terms of physical fitness, so there was a situation in ancient times that women were not counted as laborers. The root cause of everything is due to economic problems, and it is precisely for this reason that the status of women in ancient times was so low, because they could not participate in production activities, and they did not have enough status in the economy. When the ground level is low, anything will happen, and "eating out of households" is one of the manifestations.
The ancients believed that women are vassals of the family, and men are the real masters of the family, and if a family has no men, then there is no need for the family to exist. Therefore, at this time, members of other families will come to rob the family of wealth, which is reasonable in the eyes of the ancients. And the people who bully these women are usually none other than their relatives, such as a man who died in an accident, and the family happens to have no sons, so all the relatives of the man come to rob the family of what little wealth they have.
3. Poor woman
After snatching the wealth, the behavior of "eating the household" is still not over, and these relatives will continue to bully these women in different ways to achieve the goal of driving them out. Why? Because these relatives believe that all the wealth of the women has been plundered and has long been worthless, and that if they continue to stay in this house, they will consume food, and the best way is to expel them. These women end up in a pitiful end, and it would be best to find another man to marry, and some of them will end up on the streets and become beggars. Seeing this, many friends must have such a question in their hearts, was there a way for the ancients to avoid all this?
Of course, there is a way, but it is more difficult to implement. For example, if a family is left without a man, this can be avoided if the mistress is able to adopt a son. But the problem lies here, this kind of adoptive behavior only exists between relatives, and the ultimate beneficiary of "eating out of households" is this group of relatives, so whether they are willing to adopt is a big problem, and even if they are adoptive, whether other relatives will recognize it is another question. Is it okay for these women to choose to move? Of course, it is also not, because the most important wealth in ancient times was land, and once people left, it was almost like being eaten out of their homes, and all the wealth was gone anyway.
epilogue
The status of women in ancient times was relatively low, so a large part of the bad habits were aimed at these women, such as the "foot binding" specifically for women, and the specially designed concept of "three obedience and four virtues". As the saying goes, women can hold up half the sky, from the most realistic point of view, this kind of behavior is absolutely undesirable, a country wants to develop, it must have enough labor force, if it cannot achieve the liberation of women, it will naturally lose half of the labor force, so how can the country develop?