A report recalled me to my mother.
Well, these days I sometimes complain like that
"I'm almost being empty nest syndrom." "Do I need to be independent ecnomically?"
Well, an eldery woman critic wrote an essey on the news paper. The title was "the way to live for women". Probably she is as old as my mother, or in the same generation. So it must have been unusaly to live as both a mother and a working lady.
She said
"My husband suddenly passed by when I was thirty. At that time my daughter was 4. I had been crying for one week, and I took 3-weeks off. My friends came to encourage me. And one of them said to me. It made me really surprised."
The friend said
"You can afford to cry because you work, you are independent from your husband ecnomically. So you should cry as much as you want. If you were a housewife, you had no time to cry. Such housewives must really worry that how they and their kids would live from now".
She said
"I understood, being independent ecnomically means to be able to cry when women want to and should cry as much as want"
My father passed away suddenly because of heart attack, at that time my mother was 43. Though I was 18, my younger daugter was still an elementary school student. I don't remember my mother having cryed. As soon as his funeral, she went to the tax office on my memory. I was absent from school for one week, but probablly my brotehrs went to school, and I did housework instead of my mother.
At that time, the city, the company my father had worked at, and even schools got us lots of help. For example it was really easy for me and my brothers to get scholarship. And my mother says "at that time verious kinds of taxes were excused".
Fortunately we could live as usual, my mother didn't need to work outside becuase of lots of help and my father's asset (not so much). So even now (she is past 70) she is a "housewife". Now she is able to live with her pension, and we (her kids) don't need to get money to her, on the contrary even now we "sometimes" depend on her about our kids. It measn my daughters often get pocket money from her.
being independet ecnomically--- I'm thinking about this.
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1 comment:
Mieko, That was a very complex thought for you to attempt in English...good for you! And, I think the subject itself, both in Japanese or English, is a deep one with few easy answers. Here, I believe the current trend is for (young) women indeed to be financially independent. In part, it is because of the high divorce rate and the unexpected necessity for women to become the support of not only herself but also children. But also we have become a society of "must haves" and it takes two incomes to provide the necessary income for all the "necessities" of today...cars, the latest electronics, cell phones, frequent use of restaurants, golf clubs, overseas vacations, vacation homes, etc. However, upon retirement there is also the added attraction of two retirement incomes. And that alone, with people living longer and the expenses increasing for truly basic items such as medications, utilities, gas, etc., makes it more important to women to work. For women staying home and being a housewife and mother has become a luxury. Jan
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