Guo Xiaohan
For women in the workplace, how to balance family and work is an art. British scholar Shani O'Gard's "Return to Family? The book "Family, Career and Unattainable Equality" interviews many London women who have given up their careers for their families, exposing the inequality behind the slogan of gender equality. On the occasion of the launch of the Chinese edition of the book, we invite Guo Xiaohan, who has been in the workplace and has had a family, and is now a freelancer and a single mother, to talk about how she views the balance between family and work from her own experience. And, now that she lives alone, what kind of independent woman is in her mind?
09:41
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Guo Xiaohan on the Balance between Family and Career (09:41)
Is good balance the goal for women?
I agree that the art of good balance is a woman's goal, but I think there is a general sense of misunderstanding and stereotype about balance. The balance I want is that I want to work and live, to be a good professional and a good wife.
Family and work are likely to be bricks at one end of the scale, and the other end of the scale should be the ego, yourself. If you balance these two sides as a balance, then you are actually crushed under two bricks.
When I balance my family and career, I have experienced a lot of collapses, and this collapse is also very specific, such as traffic jams to and from work, your family will ask (at night) 6:30 for the whole family to eat, that may be the most congested time in Beijing, you can't fly back; (if you go back early) Your company's meeting has not finished, you are an irresponsible leader who goes first than others. If you want to balance this, you have no solution.
For me, equilibrium is subtraction, not addition. This one sucks a little, that one pulls out a little, this doesn't work, that doesn't work. Isn't balance flat, and it's not that balance is heavy, right?
Family, pressure or strength?
I've also postpartum where your body will change, hormones will change, and you'll have a lot of emotional stuff. This is a special time, and you definitely need special care, understanding, love, and help. Many times when a child is born, such as a parent who comes to help, including the husband, will focus on the child, a person who has paid the most pain, the greatest hardship, the greatest sacrifice, but will be left out in the cold, saying, your task is completed, or your current task is to breastfeed. In that most sensitive time, the most in need of love, she gets indifference, neglect, and even more labor, negative emotions, pressure, of course, she will collapse.
Some of the gender relations I know are better, in fact, for them, the family is a very warm place, a place where I am very tired after a day of work outside, I hope to go back immediately, and I will be with my children immediately after I go back, just like charging. Although I raised my own child, I also feel that the home is like a crystal hole, and I can fully charge it when I put it in.
Did you build your home into a crystal cave or a trash can? Many people turn their homes into trash cans, all the negative emotions, resentment, dissatisfaction, irritability, that is, the worst side of themselves are all thrown to the family, and the family becomes a family that no one wants to return to.
Screenshot of the movie "Kim Ji-young born in 1982"
How to define a woman's identity?
The identity of a woman is the girl herself. Her identity is not a female employee, a female boss, a female president, a mother, a daughter, I think these are all the ends of the scale, they are all social identities, they are all labels given to you by others. On the other hand, the other end is the ego, I'm a girl herself, I love pretty or I like beautiful things, I like to be clean, I like kids, I like music, I like art, and so on.
The true self of man is conscious, fluid, and ever-changing, and I have also changed from a tomboy and rock girl when I was a child to a middle-aged single mom like this. I am fluid, I have my way of life, I have my work, I have my way of dealing with people, this is who I am. Mom is not me, female writers are not me, female music critics are not me, these totally are not me, I am not named by these things. I hope that girls also realize this, the real self and what they want, what they want to express, the atmosphere they want to be in, it's not just that you want others to give it to you, but that you have to build it yourself.
Screenshot of the Japanese drama "Home on the Ramp"
a house ≠ alone
I have lived alone for four or five years from 2016 and 2017 to the present. Of course, I take children with me on weekends or holidays, and my mother usually helps. I live in the hutong, my home may only be twenty or thirty square meters, but the whole hutong is my home, because there are very good cafes, restaurants, bookstores, theaters. To return to this alley is to return to my family. I also pay a lot of attention to the relationship with neighbors, friends, and peers, that is, I am organizing an abstract home in another way.
I don't think being independent means being isolated, and living alone doesn't mean you just don't come out of your own twenty square meters. You have to read books, you have to watch movies, you have to look for the same kind, you have to communicate with people. I can go back to a very original small origin, the smallest origin that my economic ability and energy can bear, but on this origin, you have to extend your tentacles to care for society, to care for the world, to care for nature. Even if you are in a 30 square meter rental house, you want to change a good curtain, you want to find a suitable chair, you want to read a book that heals you, this is what you need to deal with others and absorb information from the outside world to be able to do. Then take these details of life as the basis to reasonably construct your relationship with the world, and the value of all things is actually communicated.
Single-family reading recommendations
I feel that I live in the hutong, choose a person to live and choose to be a freelancer, are the result of self-selection, this active choice in a larger range, is to do a social practice, that is, in the current situation of so much public opinion, so many stereotypes, so many contradictions, a forty-year-old woman like me, making self-choice, how to be both independent and coordinated. Of course, I didn't succeed, I was just practicing, but there are also books to read, and this book is very originator, which is Walden Lake.
Walden, Translation Forest Press, October 2020
I've flipped through Walden countless times, and there are four versions of it at home, and I can memorize a lot of the golden sentences in it. It is very good for how individuals can get along with nature alone, how to get along with themselves, how to know themselves. But it is also a social practice, which was created in a few years. It returns to man himself, how man exchanges energy with the world. If you understand this book, then there is no problem with your solitary life.
Independent women in mind
One of the female bassists of Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon, wrote many years ago called Band Girls. In the eyes of the outside world, they have become artists from classmates to partners, and they have become such a famous band, which is said by everyone to be "heavenly immortals". Then, she found out the problem, quit the band, quit the family, experienced a lot of contradictions, and finally did the music herself, to paint. She has always been a spiritual icon for me. She can be aware, self-aware, self-selecting, know what she's doing, and be able to take responsibility for most of the things she does—not called responsible, be able to take responsibility.
Band Girls: Memoirs of Kim Gordon
(Independent women in your mind) subdivide down, first of all, economically can be, to put it bluntly is to make money; secondly, you have to think, more clearly and objectively to see some things; emotional independence is also very important, if you are a woman, not necessarily a husband or boyfriend, there is emotion, you have to know how to express your love for others, know how to love others, but also know when others give you love, how to catch it.
【Further reading】
Back to Home? - Family, Career and Unattainable Equality
Shani Ogaard / by Liu Yu / Translation, Guangxi Normal University Press, Republic, September 2021 edition
In this book, Shani Ogaard, a professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the London School of Economics and Political Science, interviews many highly educated London women who have worked as lawyers, accountants, teachers, designers, journalists, and doctors, but have all eventually returned to their families and become full-time housewives. The media and policies encourage working women to maintain a work-family balance and build partnership-style equality, but the reality is quite the opposite. By listening to these women, Shani Ogaard hopes to help them achieve true equality in their family life and work.
"Private Primary School Breakthrough: Elite Education That Doesn't Lose at the Starting Line"
【Japanese】Kumiko Makihara / By Liu Xiaoting / Translation, Guangxi Normal University Press, Republic of China, September 2021 edition
The author, who was a reporter for Time magazine and the Associated Press, at the suggestion of a friend, let his son enter a private elementary school through difficult tuition, but finally chose to leave in the midst of heavy schoolwork and cruel competition. In the book, Kumiko Makihara reviews this arduous journey.
Surviving in the Cracks: Overwhelmed Middle-Class Families
Alyssa Quart/ By Huang Menglin/Translation, Hainan Publishing House, Republic, September 2021 edition
This book describes the real situation of middle-class families in the United States, interviewing middle-class families in traditional occupations such as university professors, lawyers, nurses, and so on, who are also struggling to survive in the face of high rents and heavy medical and educational burdens.
"Unemployed White-Collar Workers' Workplace Drift"
[Beauty] Barbara Allenric / by Lin Shuyuan / Translation, Guangxi Normal University Press, Republic of China, September 2021 edition
What kind of dilemma will middle-aged unemployed white-collar workers face? As an investigative journalist, the author reveals the true situation of the downward mobility of the white-collar class in the United States through seven months of failed job search experience of "unemployed white-collar workers".
Editor-in-Charge: Gu Ming
Proofreader: Ding Xiao