丨 Du Du Du Xiwang
Editor | Yan Ruyi
Principal Zhang Guimei, who established a free high school for poor girls, has been pushed to the forefront. This time it was because of a "housewife". In an interview with
, Zhang Guimei said that she had a female student who had finally gotten a second book and walked out of the mountains, but she became a full-time wife. The student
brought her husband and children, "coming back with a bunch of money" and said that she would donate to the school. Zhang Guimei was angry and told her to "get out".
A girl who had gone to a free teacher training school became a wife with her husband and a child. She tried to donate to the former school with a large amount of money in a noble attitude, but was scolded by the principal in the end. The picture is full of sense.
However, after public opinion fermented, Huang Fuyan, the party concerned, restored the B-side of the matter: After
graduated from university, Huang Fuyan worked as a telemarketer and also an outsourced HR. In the end, she resigned because she was pregnant and had to prepare for teacher exams, and met Mr. Zhang Guimei. During the resignation period. When
met Teacher Zhang, Huang Fuyan prepared 2,000 yuan, but because she said that she was not working, she had always asked for female students to "independence and not rely on men" with a cold attitude. In the second year after the donation was rejected, Huang Fuyan was admitted to a special post teacher at an elementary school in Anshun, Guizhou, and her life was back on track.
Part of the response from the party concerned, Huang Fuyan,
Obviously, Huang Fuyan is not a full-time wife who enjoys life as many people imagine. From a personal standpoint,
, principal Zhang of a free high school, can completely refuse to donate to express his dissatisfaction. However, the discussion in the online tube has deviated from the original course:
"The existence of a housewife is a waste of resources."
"Only greed to enjoy. The talented people will be housewives."
So what kind of profession is a housewife?
How a woman becomes a housewife
In the eyes of many people, a housewife is equal to a full-time wife, who only needs to enjoy life. But many people may not realize that housewives may be a helpless choice.
Li Jia, 38, became a housewife one year after her marriage.
Before that, she earned 2,000 yuan a month and her husband earned 3,000 yuan a month.
Li Jia’s mother passed away very early, and her parents-in-law had to work farming while taking care of her paralyzed mother-in-law. They couldn’t get out even when Li Jia was pregnant.
Her husband resigned before the child was born, and her mother-in-law hurried from home the day before the birth. After the daughter was three months old, the mother-in-law had to go back to take care of the elderly. When the husband had to go back to work because of too much expense, who would take care of the child became a problem again.
Li Jia went to the market and asked about the price of a babysitter, which was almost equal to her monthly income. She felt that instead of going out to work and looking for a babysitter, she might as well quit her job to take care of the children. Cases like
Li Jia are everywhere on the Internet. Many women choose to be housewives not for coveting comfort, but for the helplessness of survival under pressure.
Discussions about housewives on a female social platform mostly point to helplessness and hesitation
Discussions about housewives on a female social platform mostly point to helplessness and hesitation
data shows that the proportion of young Chinese parents at home full-time is gradually increasing , Accounting for 58.6%, of which, post-95 full-time mothers accounted for 82%, more concentrated in lower-tier cities.
low-tier cities not only mean that their living standards are not high, but also mean that they face greater family pressure and social pressure.
Young women are for their newborn children, and middle-aged women are more for taking care of the elderly.
When there is an elderly person who is sick and needs to be accompanied around the clock, many dual-income families often choose to sacrifice the work of the woman to take care of the family: she needs to take care of the elderly every day, prepare three meals a day for the family, organize housework and cleaning, and of course also take care of it. Education and counseling of children.
In this case, because housewives do not need to go out to work, they must be satisfied with everything by default-after all, they have a natural disadvantage, "not making money".
butWhat's interesting is that if a man is waiting for work at home for various reasons, he will not take the initiative to undertake housework.
In other words, the housewives in this court seem to "do not make money", but in fact they use their own labor to reduce the economic pressure of the family, and they also undertake part of the work of social welfare and security.
In contrast, the kind of middle-class family that does not need two people to work at the same time because one party has a substantial income is a minority.
The ideal life of drinking afternoon tea, walking the dog, and making hair may exist, but it is certainly not the mainstream ecology among millions of housewives.
A housewife is not the same as a full-time wife. The latter is a choice, while the former is helpless.
How much is housework worth?
If women stay at home, how much housework do they have to do in a day?
has a Japanese housewife who shared her housework schedule. She will get up at 4 and 6 in the morning to breastfeed the child, and then make breakfast, wash the child, vacuum, wash, and take the child out for a walk. After lunch, the child sleeps, and she takes the opportunity to clean up the house and prepare dinner.
At night, bathe the child, play games with the child, and put the child to sleep. After that, I have to continue to clean up the house and sleep at one o'clock in the morning.
How much time does this work take and how much is it worth? According to the
Japanese drama "Escape from Shameful But Useful", Japanese full-time wives spend 2,199 hours of unpaid work a year, and an average of 6 hours a day do various housework. If
is counted as income, the housewife’s annual salary is as high as 3.041 million yen (about 195,000 yuan).
South Korea has also evaluated the economic value of housework. In 2018, the Statistics Department converted 59 kinds of housework such as childcare, washing, and cleaning into money, and concluded that these housework is worth 361 trillion won per year, accounting for 24.3% of South Korea’s GDP.
For a full-time housewife who works 6 hours a day, the monthly salary should be around 1.9 million won (about 11,000 yuan). Many people still feel that this number is lower than it actually is, because in infants and young children, housewives do not take a rest for almost 24 hours.
If the equivalent childcare services are purchased in the market, the cost will be much greater than this figure.
In China, data shows that full-time mothers work 365 days a year and work an average of 14.5 hours per day, which is much longer than the prescribed working hours. Z2z
Although the number and variety of housework are numerous and diverse, in the eyes of many people, housework is "second-rate labor" that does not require brainstorming and has no technical content.
In the labor market, with the exception of confinements and nurses, most housekeeping services are very cheap. Ask an hourly worker in Beijing to do cleaning, the price can be as low as 40 yuan/hour, and a part of it has to be paid to the intermediary company, and the aunt has very little money.
This kind of "housekeeping discrimination" also exists in marriage. Although many husbands do not touch the sun with their own fingers, they feel that doing housework is a very easy thing:
"Isn’t it just sweeping the floor and wiping the table? If I stay at home, I will do better than you!"
but In fact, housework is not that simple. The above is the daily/weekly/quarterly/annual housework list summarized by the official account "Live Well"
Trivial housework takes up a lot of time. At home, apart from the intensive work of cooking and sweeping the floor, fragmentary tidying work is everywhere.
In Shanghai, the average working time of domestic workers is 12 hours, which is a real "996". If it is a live-in nanny, the working hours are longer than this, and it may reach "007" which is 24/7.
The average working hours of aunt
On the other hand, housework is not as simple as imagined. In addition to the execution itself, the housewife must also learn to discover tasks, allocate time reasonably, and continuously optimize the execution process.
An excellent housewife must possess the qualities and abilities of a CEO.
Therefore, in some European and American countries, if a divorce occurs, the husband has to pay alimony to his full-time wife; Japan also stipulates that the husband has to pay a pension to the wife who is “stay behind” at home.
overlooked value,It is not that
housework is complicated and cumbersome, and it is indispensable in family life. That being the case, why do so many people look down on housewives?
First of all, many people do not see the value of housework.
Many husbands, in addition to "I can do it for me," are also good at cite the "wife of other people's house" who grasps work and housework as a positive model: You see, old X's wife is capable of work and good housework, why can't you? In their eyes,
is working hard to support his wife and family, and housewives’ wives will only increase their financial pressure.
But what they don't realize is that in many cases, with the support of the housewife, they can forget the complicated housework and devote themselves to work.
Compared with men’s contempt, homosexual accusations are more radical, and there is a bit of hatred for iron and steel.
They believe that women without income have no status and voice at home, and when housewives want to return to society, they are often not listed as the first choice because they have not gone out to work for too long. Over time, the independent personality of women is a kind of destruction.
In fact, the two sides have basically the same focus, that is, housewives do not produce value.
However, in fact, in addition to the subsistence wage of the employer, there is another concept of family wage in foreign countries, which refers to the money that migrant workers should pay to their wives and children who work at home-it is wages, not living expenses. Z2z
“salary” means that the housewife’s labor has a visual value; while the “living expenses” is more like a charity from the husband, not only tacitly agreeing that the housewives’ contributions are justified, but also can be recovered at any time.
Housewives are not valueless, but value is not taken seriously.
and "no value" as short , or even stigmatization of housewives, is really chilling.
Many people do not recommend being housewives. The original intention is to hope that women will not be kidnapped by the slogan of returning to the family, encouraging everyone to live out of themselves, instead of restricting the right to freely choose a career, and not detracting from another hard-working group.
, rather than confrontation in the name of freedom, will trample housewives under their feet.
But if you realize that many people become housewives not to enjoy, but to bear, then all the truth becomes very simple:
they are forced to become the footnotes of the family, and they have no choice but to bear the double neglect of society and family , Loss of wages and the possibility of financial freedom.
When the children grow up, the pressure of taking care of them is gradually reduced. They are faced with unimaginable panic and hesitation: After many years of leaving the workplace, will there be employers who want me? If I can't go back to the workplace, what else can I do? People around
find it difficult to understand their sacrifice.
In many cases, housewives can only talk about their helplessness in a group. In the eyes of bystanders, they are labelled as coveting ease and even blame themselves.
has not only faced self-doubt, but also faced the heinous accusations of public opinion after making huge contributions to the family and years of unpaid work. They like
should not become the bottom layer in the whirlpool of public opinion.
You can choose to firmly refuse to be a housewife. Women's pursuit of independence and self-improvement is a commendable behavior.
But please do not put housewives on the opposite of "women's independence and self-reliance".
They choose to become housewives, which may include consideration of family economics, care for the elderly and children, support for the husband's work... Because the future is unknown, this choice also requires courage. If
cannot help them, and paid housework is too far away, then please try to understand them first.
