Back from China
This is me in the very beautiful Yu Garden in Shanghai. It was really, really hot.
Photo credit: Eileen Zampa’s tour guide in China.
I returned safely from China and all was well on the home front. (Don’t think they missed me that much!) China was amazing. I was struck by many sights and experiences but two points come to mind that I think are relevant to momgoesback.
First, the majority of moms are working moms. If they can work, they do. The women I worked with were working professionals, upper middle-class. The first day at a welcome business lunch hosted by my sponsor company, there was a celebratory toast offered to a new mom at the table. Needless to say, with China’s one-child policy, the birth of your child is a momentous occasion and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It made me very self-conscious during conversations to say I had three children but also appreciative that I had the choice to have as many children as I wanted. Walking around Shanghai you don’t see very many children and when you do, they are always with several adults, usually both sets of grandparents.
Second observation — the Confucian tradition of a strong, extended and hierarchical (paternal hierarchy of course) family has translated in modern times to built-in childcare. Grandmothers care for the child of the family, freeing up time for both parents to work. A classmate of mine is here in the U.S. while her one-year old son lives in China with her parents and his father is in Hong Kong. This is a rare circumstance in the U.S. but growing common in China as more women come to the U.S. for higher education.
