In the Japanese drama "I, Get off work at the end of the day", she receives a phone call from home and is a nervous working mother.
This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account "Yiyi" (ID: yitiaotv), the original article was first published on March 21, 2021, the original title is "After giving birth, the whole society is punishing me", does not represent the view of the Lookout Think Tank.
At this year's two sessions, women's issues are frequently searched. The most high-profile proposals include: husband and wife take maternity leave together, increase the proportion of women in the decision-making level of the workplace, issue birth subsidies on a family basis, extend the school hours of kindergartens and primary schools to support women in the workplace... The revision of the Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests is also on the agenda.
Women's issues have always been a concern. We found that 90% of working mothers believe that childbirth hinders their career development, and a number of new middle-class parents who earn millions of dollars and have tens of millions of assets are deeply frustrated in their children's education.
"A Few Middle-Aged Things" writes the stories of 22 middle-aged women:
"Do you want to maintain a marriage that has long been loveless for the sake of the children?"
"After marriage, do you want to return to the workplace?"
"What should the husband do if he doesn't care about the family?" ......
We have selected three stories from the past year to share with you.
1 A key school for Haidian mothers
Amber and son Peanuts
Amber, the author of "Ashore: A Key School Break for Haidian Moms," and three other new middle-class mothers, have personally experienced the educational dilemmas that have been deeply involved.
Beijing mother Amber became a full-time housewife 4 years ago, specializing in "chicken babies" - urging babies to learn and beating chicken blood for babies.
Before resigning, she was the project manager of a Fortune 500 foreign company, and she had been pursuing the "happy education" of Buddhist stocking for her son Peanut until Peanut went to the fourth grade of primary school, and one day she came home from school and said: "Mom, I want to enter Haidian Liu Xiaoqiang." ”
An Baicha information knows that the "Haidian Six Xiaoqiang" in the son's mouth refers to the six most cattle public middle schools in Haidian District of Beijing - Renmin University Affiliated Middle School, Peking University Affiliated Middle School, Tsinghua Affiliated Middle School, 101 Middle School, Eleventh School and First Teacher University Attached Middle School.
These six schools contracted more than 90% of the Qingbei admission quota in Haidian District. Amber calculated that the probability of being able to enter the six small strong is "a little higher than the probability of winning the 5 million lottery."
In order to sprint to the haidian six small strong, peanuts went to 3 olympic number classes in two years and won a second prize in the Olympic number. The tutor kindly reminded Amber that the second prize is equal to no prize.
Take part in a piano show
Hangzhou's dot mother is a foreign company executive. Her daughter Diandian is a well-known "bullfrog" in the circle. I began to contact English at the age of two, learned piano at the age of four, began to learn Go in kindergarten, and Chinese dance, ballet, chorus, painting...
I wake up at seven o'clock every morning and go to bed at ten o'clock at night. She just started the first grade of primary school this year and already has a clear goal for the future: "I want to enter Tsinghua Peking University." ”
Dotted weekly schedule
Amber found that since her son Peanuts was a little promoted, she had more and more stay-at-home mothers around her. Before peanuts in the third grade, there were only a few full-time mothers in the class, and when it was time to prepare for the small promotion, it suddenly increased to more than a dozen.
"Others say, let the manager of a Fortune 500 company not do it, go to be a full-time mother, you are stupid." But in fact, after resigning, I found that I couldn't finish what I had to learn, and the day I went to work was when the monk hit the clock one day, and I was slowly out of touch with the times. In the two years of being a stay-at-home mom, I have improved the fastest in my life. ”
After resigning, Amber got up at six o'clock every morning, sent his children to school, and went home to check materials, do research, and write public account articles. She has paid attention to 20 primary public accounts and forums, added 12 course groups, 7 parent groups, inspected pit classes, and studied PET and FCE (Grading of Cambridge English Grade Examination).
She has worked in foreign companies for many years, the level of English major is eight, and she found that the English reading comprehension questions at the beginning of the small ascension were unsure, so she spent 2,000 yuan to register for the IELTS exam, and then spent 5,000 yuan to apply for the IELTS 7 points online course. When she entered the exam room, she was the oldest one.
Pudding and Mom
Another pudding mother who is also in Hangzhou is almost 40 years old in order to accompany pudding to practice piano, and she began to learn music theory with zero foundation, following behind to take notes during class.
Amber sighed that fighting children to the end is actually still spelling daddy and mother.
In China, the high level of "chicken babies" reflects the collective anxiety of a class.
Surveys show that the main force of China's "chicken babies" today is a group of new middle-class parents. They live in first- and second-tier cities, generally Kochi, high income, annual household income of more than 1 million, asset level of more than 10 million, but rarely more than 100 million. The biggest fear is the decline in class, and investment in education is the most familiar path for them to protect their class status.
Pudding has been learning to play the piano for three years
After ten years of marriage, The pudding mother and her husband did not want children until the age of 36. She never thought that pudding would have bad grades - her family went up three generations, pudding's grandparents and grandparents were all 985, her own college entrance examination was the top 50 in zhejiang liberal arts, and her husband was an undergraduate and graduate student at Zhejiang University.
"Everyone actually has a bottom line, in our family, the baby can definitely go to 985."
However, after a few years of "fighting wits" with her son, Pudding's mother was less confident: "Whether he can go to a good university or not, I really have to play a question mark." 」 ”
The biggest problem with pudding is that there is no self-consciousness in learning, and it all depends on parental supervision. Pudding's mother can only use staring tactics, and last week she went on a trip that made her blame herself:
"I was afraid of delaying the pudding, and as soon as I left, he was delayed again for a weekend, and his time was precious."
In the TV series "Little Joy", the three members of the Qiao family are anxious about further education.
For the sake of Xiaosheng, Amber chicken baby chicken for more than a year, found that the hope of "going ashore" is getting slimmer and dimmer, but his son has become mature in the process.
In the past, Peanut would write in an essay that his ideal life was to live in a big house, eat food and travel.
After more than a year, she took Peanuts on the trip again, and when booking a hotel, she asked her son if he wanted to book a better hotel this time, but he did not expect that Peanut replied:
"If I spend money myself, I may not choose such an expensive one, and I will choose a cost-effective one." Anyway we played so late during the day, we couldn't enjoy much of the hotel facilities. However, now it's Mom spending money, and you want to live what I follow you. ”
Amber realized that the value of the chicken baby may not be the only result of landing. It's "when you make these efforts, no matter what the result is, whether you go ashore or not, his strength will not disappear out of thin air." If he develops the habit of learning in the process and the mentality that he can overcome difficulties in the process, it will be helpful for the whole life. ”
"Perhaps we should reflect on the need to turn children into perfect 'products' carefully crafted on the assembly line." Amber concludes, "In the eyes of an interviewer at a prestigious school, a perfect product may not be as good as a flawed living person." ”
2 Survival Report of Working Mothers in China
The working mother of the second child in "An Home" hides in the bathroom late at night and works overtime.
Survey data from several major recruitment platforms in the past two years shows that working mothers contribute nearly 40% of the average family income, 65% of working mothers believe that they have potential depression tendencies, more than 80% of mothers feel guilty about their children, and nine adults believe that childbirth hinders their career development.
A survey of more than 30 working mothers and a detailed return visit to 10 of them found that working 996 and 007 with babies, mothers were squeezed to the point where it was difficult to breathe.
Shenzhen mother Zhu Yuanyuan works in a communications company, after giving birth to a child in order not to be left behind, she went home from work to put the child to sleep, she continued to work overtime, the work was just done, the child woke up again, she could only sleep four hours a night, or the performance to do the first in the Shenzhen branch, but the promotion still did not have her share.
When talking to her, HR is very good at wrapping words: "We don't think we want to use management positions to take up too much of your time with your children." At first glance, it sounds good for her, but in fact, it uses stereotypes to cut off the promotion path of working mothers.
In "I, To The End of Work", working mothers go home after working overtime to see their babies tired and asleep.
In our interviews, all moms made it clear that balancing work and family is a downright pseudo-proposition that no one can do.
We asked working mothers to describe their most devastating moments, and half of them told similar scenes: children were sick, they had to work overtime, the elderly were alone to cope with being tired, and they called to ask if they could go home immediately: "Tired to no time to despair." ”
Most working mothers agree that "widowed parenting" is more of a rhetoric, and there are very few husbands who are completely out of control. But the general situation is that they automatically assume that they are assistants and performers, and the energy and time invested are far from comparable to those of mothers.
In "An Jia", the husband of Gong Beibei, a working mother, thinks that he is very concerned about the family.
Zhu Yuanyuan found that she took her baby and went to work and slept only four hours a day, but her husband had a much more relaxed life, arranging fitness, walking, and playing games for herself, without any guilt:
"Because he didn't get involved so deeply, would he feel that not everyone was doing the work?" Isn't there a nanny at home? I'll do whatever you ask me to do, and I won't do it if you don't let me do it, and he doesn't seem to need him that much anyway. ”
Many working mothers rely heavily on the help of the elderly. But watching children is an extremely energy- and physically demanding thing, which runs counter to the aging physical condition of the elderly. The degree of professionalism of child-rearing sisters-in-law and nannies is very low, interviews and training cost a lot of energy, and once the nanny resigns, it is finally the working mother who carries the pot.
Comparison of fertility-related benefits by country
According to the "Working Mother Survival Report"
Why is the dilemma of working mothers so difficult to solve? American Caitlin Collins spent 5 years visiting 135 working mothers in four countries and writing a nearly 500-page "Working Mother Survival Report".
Where are the middle-class working moms having the best time? The book concludes: Sweden.
It is a country with high taxes and high benefits, encouraging fathers and mothers to take the same amount of parental leave, and the government allocates sufficient and low-cost nurseries, kindergartens and schools, and children can enter the custody system from the age of one, and only need to pay about 1,000 yuan per month (the average monthly income of white-collar workers in Sweden is about 23,000 yuan).
At the same time, Sweden's workplace culture does not encourage overtime, where both men and women have up to 25 days of paid leave a year, and the vacation method is also flexible and can be arranged freely. Therefore, the proportion of Swedish mothers involved in social work is extremely high, and how to balance family and work is a choice that does not need to be tangled.
In the documentary "Childhood in Other Places", Zhu Youting tells the importance that Nordic countries attach to their mothers.
The author points out that the real source of consciousness behind this series of policies is that they believe that children belong to society, parents are contributing to society by having children, then society should clear all obstacles for parents as much as possible and create various convenient conditions.
According to the book, the situation in China is most similar to that of the United States, where there is a tendency to think that childbearing is a personal matter and that individuals should find their own way to solve it. Coupled with the stereotype of gender division of labor, this pressure ultimately falls only on female family members, that is, mothers.
The Japanese drama "I, To the End of Work" profoundly shows the workplace dilemma of women who have been raised.
In the process of chatting with working mothers, they will talk about raising children in this society often makes them feel ashamed, especially their own work, in fact, the child is not welcome.
Li Xinran is always struggling with whether to participate in unit team building or colleague dinner. Not participating seems unsociable, participate in it, it is difficult to control the time, each time a little later, the old man always calls one after another to ask her when to go back:
"The leader will say in front of you, you see your family asks, or go back." As soon as you leave, the male leader will say that women are like this, and they feel that you have a lot of things. ”
One working mom said she felt one of the highest compliments she received in the workplace was when others praised her for "acting like you don't have children."
Gu Jia, who temporarily quit the workplace in order to take the baby in "Thirty Only".
Of the working moms we interviewed, three adults said they regretted getting married and having children. A mother laments repeatedly, when the mother has no way back.
Over the years, there have been articles on social networks discussing the pain of childbearing, often giving the illusion that we understand enough what fertility means. So much so that if there are new articles on this topic, there will always be people who loudly accuse the publisher of not creating anxiety anymore.
However, Li Xinran's feelings were the opposite. After giving birth, she found that the people she really came into contact with in life, such as her mother and mother-in-law, never mentioned to her the price she paid for childbearing, always only talking about the benefits of having children, and everyone seemed to keep a secret with tacit understanding.
It wasn't until she had a child that her mother told her that she regretted giving birth to her and felt that she had become a tool to serve her child.
Stills from "Find You"
One mom said her current feelings about being a mother are both your gift and your curse. But she felt that this was not right, "Why work-family conflicts, must be borne by working mothers?" ”
The author, who wrote the 500-page Survival Report for Working Moms, shares the same view. "I wrote this book to tell you that work-family conflicts are not the misfortunes that working mothers are destined to bear, but a phenomenon caused by society, that is, society should be able to change this situation."
3 Middle-aged women are the mainstay of society
In the book "Few Middle-Aged Things", the author Qiu Selianbo wrote the stories of 22 middle-aged women, each of whom faced different life problems:
There are divorces that go to great lengths; there are parents who die one after another due to illness within a year; there are those who are distressed about their children's further education; there are middle-aged unemployed...
As a middle-aged female writer, in her story, men basically play a secondary role, and middle-aged women are the real mainstay of this society.
She summarized the midlife crisis of women, which can be summarized into four aspects: marriage, childcare, family affection and the workplace.
* Marriage: Marriage without love, inseparable?
She wrote in the book the story of a middle-aged woman who initiated a divorce.
The protagonist is 45 years old and begins a divorce from her husband after the death of her mother. The husband felt incredible and yelled at her: "How can you divorce someone who has just helped his mother with her funeral?" ”
It had been five years since she first filed for divorce.
The husband in the story has never been concerned about this family: the daughter has not been picked up and dropped off from school; the parents' meeting has not been attended; even if the daughter is sick, she is alone with the child in line at the children's hospital toll booth; the in-laws are even more cold to her because of the preference for sons and daughters.
A few months ago, her daughter took the middle school entrance examination, she took care of her critically ill mother in the hospital, and after the examination, her daughter went home to cook for her husband! My daughter always said, "I really hope that my father is on a business trip, he is at home, and he has to serve him and listen to his various picks." ”
The only reason she persisted in surviving these five years was that her mother had high blood pressure and coronary heart disease, and she was afraid that she would not be able to stand it. "I couldn't bear my mother's disappointed look and the possibility of being sick because of it."
On the property, she made a big concession, gave the house to her husband, and only needed children and cash herself.
As a middle-aged woman, she has long understood that she can't decide what the other party thinks and how to do it. So she decided not to compromise anymore, which was an account of herself.
* Parenting: The child is hospitalized, the husband is not around, ask for help or rely on yourself?
Most women mature quickly in middle age, especially after having children. Because on the one hand, we must take care of the husband, on the other hand, we must also take care of all aspects of the children, such as academic performance, physical health, sex education...
In the story written by Qiu SeLianbo, there is a primary school Chinese teacher who has taught for twenty years and is also a family member of a criminal police officer in a serious crime team.
Her son first suspected epilepsy when he was two years old, and on his third birthday, the two spent time in the hospital. Because the tests were done for 24 hours, they were placed in the inpatient department. The child is fine to fall asleep, but if he wakes up crying three or five times, he will not be able to sleep at all.
To soothe his emotions, she told her son a story, and several children gathered around to listen. Like her children, each had dense electrodes attached to their heads, connected to long threads. Later, she learned that most of the people who stayed in this room for a long time were severe cerebral palsy.
The next morning, when the electrodes are taken, the hair will be pulled, and then the blood will be drawn, and the child will cry all the time. She hadn't slept for 48 hours, wiping her sweat and wanting to sit on the ground and cry, but she didn't, she knew she couldn't do it.
When things were settled, the child's father went to the hospital.
When I wrote this story, Qiu Selianbo's mood was quite complicated. She thought that this mother must have thought about crying countless times, but once again she held back. This feeling has been experienced by everyone who has been a mother.
"That's it, a person who stays up and stands up will pass." Later, you found that many families are supported by such women. ”
Stills from "All Is Well"
*Workplace: Subordinates become leaders, admit their fate or step over the past?
There is also a middle-aged woman in the book, she chose to accompany her children abroad for her daughter, when she developed best in the workplace, planning to work in a branch office abroad for 8 years, just to send her daughter to college. At the time, it seemed like a sacrifice, but things didn't go as she planned.
The daughter is completely unaccustomed to the learning environment and education methods abroad, and after reading for half a year, she can't read anymore, and she is in a dilemma.
In the end, she returned home with her daughter. But in the head office, her previous subordinates have become her leaders, and this kind of working relationship is not what she wants, but what she needs. Because Mom and Dad are old and her daughter is adolescence, she needs to have a stable income to solve the family's problems.
The heroine of the Japanese drama "Sales Minister Natsuko Yoshira" returned to the workplace after giving birth to a baby.
She may regret it, but there is no way, she has to adapt, she has to accept, she can only start all over again. Once trapped in, and now you have to climb out, the process of climbing out may not be easy, nor good-looking, and even gray-headed.
Qiu Se Lianbo empathized with the characters in his writing: "The post-70s generation still believes that there will be gains from paying, even if they take a detour, they will rely on themselves to grope back." I think that as long as you keep working hard, even if the results are not the best, you will definitely gain something. ”
Stills from the movie "Don't Tell Her"
* When your parents are sick, do you continue to be a child, or do you endure the pain and metamorphosis to grow up?
Qiu SeLianbo has asked many middle-aged people around him: At what moment do you think you grew up? Many people will answer that it is the moment when their parents die.
In the book, she wrote the story of the death of a middle-aged female parent. When the protagonist is 44 years old, his mother has Alzheimer's.
Illness came like a mountain. Soon, the mother could not take care of life alone. At first, it was still the father who took care of the mother, and before long, the father's stomach was often uncomfortable, and she took it to the hospital for examination, but it turned out to be a terminal stage of stomach cancer, which had spread. Suddenly, everything was in front of her alone:
During the day, she had to go to the hospital to take care of her father, go home at night to change shifts with the nanny, watch her mother, help her son with her homework, and care about her sister-in-law who was waiting to give birth in the United States at any time. ... In just a few days, she became "a family member".
TV series "Hey! In The Old Man, a father with Alzheimer's disease only remembers his son's well-behaved appearance.
When Qiu Selianbo wrote this story, it was because the father of a friend who was close by suddenly fell ill and died. Friends said that during that time, I was in a trance, because there were too many things to deal with, and after solving a problem, I immediately had a new one. It wasn't until everything was settled that suddenly one night, for a moment, she realized that she had no father.
"The two most prominent characteristics of the middle-aged women I have come into contact with are: they are particularly able to endure hardships and are particularly able to 'fight'. Most middle-aged women are the backbone of the family. But society as a whole believes that men are the 'beams' of the family. In my opinion, men basically just need to make money. On the contrary, women need to make money and take care of their families. ”
Qiu Selianbo said that at first she just wanted to record these daily stories. It wasn't until after the book was published that she read the message and realized that women with different backgrounds and different growth environments had such a big difference in their problem-solving skills.
"Girls are one by one, but women are lumpy. A lot of young girls feel that this is like a horror novel. In fact, these are the problems that middle-aged women may encounter, or the things they are experiencing. ”
"I think this book is using the stories of these women to tell more people that even if you live in a chicken feather, you can become a decent middle-aged person."
Uncle Ku welfare
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