Intern Chen Canjie, Li Kewen, The Paper reporter Ren Wu

There is such a plot in the third part of the best-selling novel "The Naples Tetralogy", "Those Who Leave, Those Who Stay" : Pietro, who is highly educated, cannot accept hiring a nanny to share the housework, and expresses that he does not want slaves in the family.

At this time, his wife Lennon was on the verge of collapse due to the pressure of raising children alone. She couldn't help but ask her husband: "So, do you think I should be a slave?"

" You be a mother, not a slave,” he replied.

The novel naturally contains fictional elements, but it is not difficult to get a glimpse of the real problems behind it. Mothers are often given an idealistic responsibility, and the hard work behind it is regarded as "natural". Wang Zheng, a professor of women's studies and history at the University of Michigan, said in a previous interview with The Paper that for nearly a century, women's independence and women's return home have been a constant tug-of-war. Choosing to be a full-time wife means choosing a passive life. "I don't think that young women with higher education will be willing to spend their lives as good wives and mothers."

But when these mothers try to get rid of passivity, return to the workplace, and embrace new social roles, " The passivity of "mother" inevitably appears again.

Choice

When Erbao was 1 year old, Tong Cuiping successfully applied for a job as a brand consultant for a well-known company. The company was located in Tianhe CBD, Guangzhou, where the world's top 500 companies gathered. Walking among the skyscrapers, she felt excited in her heart. From now on, she would go out in a glamorous way every day and become a "white-bones woman" in the workplace.

This idea was quickly shattered by working overtime. When she got home from get off work, she had to take a three-wheel drive for 10 minutes after exiting the subway. The master did not often take the main road, and when encountering the urban management, he ran even more sideways. Those who walked through the city At night at the Zhongcun Handshake Building, Tong Cuiping felt lucky to be able to get home safely.

In addition to being thankful, she just wanted to see her two children as soon as possible, and help them brush their teeth, clean up their urine, tidy up, and put them to sleep. The two girls were very clingy and prone to losing their temper, and sometimes she was annoyed Unable to bear it, she would hope that the children would have fallen asleep when they got home, "But when they did fall asleep, I felt so lost."

At work, Dabao was in constant trouble in the kindergarten. He always peed his pants and would hit himself. At the same time, her tonsils were swollen and she was prone to colds and fevers. She was in charge of crisis public relations at the company and needed to be on call at all times. However, she had to take time off to go to the hospital almost every month, making it even harder to sleep soundly. “Sleeping alone with a child is equivalent to sleeping with your child open. If one eye sleeps, the child will wake up when he turns over. "Her husband is also busy because he started his own business.

This kind of life lasted less than a year. One day, her husband pulled out twenty or thirty white hairs from her head, which made Tong Cuiping re-examine her current situation and said, "Resign, I can't cope with it." Here we come.”

The last time she resigned was because she was pregnant with her second child unexpectedly. It was August 2011. Tong Cuiping was 29 years old. She had been in the establishment of Sun Yat-sen University for three years, doing interviews on social science books and special collections. She takes a three-hour lunch break every day. She puts a folding bed in the office. When she is tired from reading, she takes a nap. After sitting for a long time, she goes to the library and borrows a few books.

"This world is stable, but that's it." She thought she would be tied to this school for the rest of her life. The arrival of Erbao broke everything. Her parents-in-law said they would keep their iron rice bowl, but Tong Cuiping couldn't give up and still stayed alone. One person resigned. "If the other end of the scale is a life, how do you tell me to choose?"

After completing the formalities, she walked on the lawn and burst into tears. Such a good school had nothing to do with her from now on. She once took her babbling Dabao to play in school, pointing out the affiliated schools one by one and saying that this was where she would study in the future, but she could no longer miss it.

After resigning, Tong Cuiping used the corridor space to make bookshelves for her daughters. The source of the pictures in this article are all from interviewees

When Tong Cuiping proposed to resign for the second time, the director said frankly that with her resume of only one year in the workplace: she could either stay at home or start a business. Upon hearing this, Tong's hard-earned determination to resign suddenly collapsed. The director had talked to her about raising a baby before, saying that it would be great if she could put her son to sleep every day, and she didn't even dare to expect to have time to have dinner with him. Thinking that even if she strives to become a director, it will still be difficult to take care of her family, Tong Cuiping asked herself, "Is this what I want?"

The answer is no.

Tong Cuiping chooses to believe in love: even if she stays at home for the rest of her life, her marriage will not break up; even if it breaks down, her husband will not treat her badly financially; she is not lazy or stupid, and she can work as a nanny to support herself.

But this does not mean that she accepted her resignation calmly. She does not want to lose her financial independence. "This involves self-esteem and security." She started a Hong Kong goods purchasing agency with her friends, but she always felt a little "still holding on to the pipa". "Hide your face." With the reputation of being the top scorer in the college entrance examination and being recommended as a graduate student by NTU, she was embarrassed to promote it on WeChat for fear of being seen by her former classmates and teachers.

What pleased her most at that time was that Dabao's mood gradually improved with her company. "My classmate's mother said that Dingdang (Dabao) was more lively and had a feeling of life." But for herself, , Tong Cuiping always panics. If she really has to go out to look for rice, how can she make a living? Depression was stuck in my heart, and I was afraid of becoming Xianglin's wife if I talked too much. One time, I could only bite my arm hard to distract from the pain in my heart.

Tong Cuiping took her two children on a weekend trip

Adaptation

In reality, working full-time often means reducing the time allocated to the children. The degree of guilt has aggravated mothers' guilt. According to the "2019 Survival Status Report of Working Mothers" by a recruitment website, the proportion of mothers who feel great psychological pressure due to lack of companionship with their children is as high as 85%.

Hu Qianyun, who is engaged in e-commerce operations in Shanghai, also faced strong separation anxiety because he could not see his children when he returned to the workplace in October 2020. When he first went to work, his child cried before going to bed and continued crying when he woke up. He also cried all the way to the nursery school. "The biggest dilemma when returning to the workplace is to face the separation from the child." Hu Qianyun gave her son a rabbit doll and said that he would hug her when he missed her. It's like my mother is with me.

And when she sat down at her workstation, the same uncontrollable longing made her anxious, so she kept flipping through her son's photo album during her lunch break; she went to drink tea and check to see if the teacher had updated the class Photos or videos of the event. She found that other children were listening to the class and doing actions with the teacher, while her child was holding the doll. "When I saw him thinking about me, I lost control and couldn't help but cry."

When Hu Qianyun's child first entered day care, he always hugged his rabbit doll

In addition to anxiety, the more immediate problem was keeping up with work progress. The Internet industry, where she had worked for nearly six years, had become unfamiliar to her in the three years of raising her children. She was aware of the speed of change in online operations - new processes, new ways of playing. These unknown fears once made her choose to escape. Until a former colleague found her, Hu Qianyun finally decided to seize the opportunity and step out of the world of only children. But on the first day of work, she didn't finish an Excel spreadsheet until 10:30 p.m. Colleagues can complete similar forms in a few minutes.

Excel spreadsheets that Hu Qianyun needs to do at work

"A store manager who was born in 1997, and I who was in operation in 1989 are a bit too weak." They almost all said " As a colleague of "children", Hu Qianyun knew that she had bid farewell to the life of "holding her mobile phone at home and chatting with her mother about children's supplies, class registration, and school district housing". She picked up a small book and wrote down every step and shortcut key of Excel. Try to figure out the main products, gifts, purchase volume, sales volume and after-sales data analysis. When I opened my eyes in a dream, I was still making a form. Every day I took the trouble to ask the next table how to do it. "I wonder if he is thinking, can the old aunt do it? How long does it take to make such a simple form?"

At that time, she didn't even have time to take a breath. She brought a lunch box for dinner, and continued working after eating. She was in a hurry to leave, and the children were always making noises. She would not sleep until she went home, but the work was not finished. Can't leave. Several times Hu Qianyun thought "I'm going crazy", why not become a store manager? She didn't have to learn this. Her former colleague originally entrusted her to be the store manager.

"The store manager's salary is very high, but he works a lot of overtime. He may have to rush out for a PPT meeting in the middle of the night." Hu Qianyun knows that it is difficult to move up after getting off work on time, but this time he returned to the workplace. Her pursuit has changed: a stable income, weekend breaks, and being able to go home and spend more time with her baby will be fine.

Nowadays, all of Hu Qianyun’s overtime allowances were “saved” in the first month. She has been able to get off work at 6 o’clock and leave at that time, and it is normal to complete three forms in five minutes. Her child adapted to the new environment faster than she did. For about two weeks, the child no longer took the doll that had always been placed on the bedside to school. "I am very happy. This step must be taken out sooner or later."

"

Prejudice

Perhaps what is more difficult than adapting to the workplace is being deprived of the right to "return" - especially when the child is autistic.

In 2015, Zhang Xiao was 34 years old. As a former HR director, she knew that the "watershed between prosperity and decline" (35 years old) in the workplace was just around the corner. She mentioned returning to the workplace several times, but her husband didn't care. She simply submitted her resume It is posted on the Internet, which covers articles she published in the internal journal of her former company, as well as multiple outstanding management commendations, but the date ends in 2011 - in May of that year, her child "Pippi" was diagnosed with autism, and she was 6 She completed her resignation in just one month.

"My mind was occupied by this earthquake-like thing." In the past four years, she had been running around Shanghai, Beijing, Shijiazhuang, Anhui and other places like a headless fly. , go wherever you want to get better, "just be lucky and spend your money", imagining which teacher your child will meet and suddenly enlighten. But Pippi is a low-functioning autistic patient who has difficulty in articulation. He takes a one-hour language class from a famous teacher. Several hundred. I've been here for more than a year, but I still can't explain what I want to eat. Maybe I think beef noodles are easy to say, but when I get to the noodle shop, I lose my temper again. When I get irritable, I hit my head for no reason, "He has no fucking feelings." Ability, I might still laugh when I cry."

After too many blows, Zhang Xiao said that in the later period, she was like a walking zombie, like a top being dragged away by a child. The melatonin used by Pippi, she had so many Buy some to eat for yourself, "He (husband) thinks that I can take my children (in a special education school) and just move on in the dark." Unable to accept the gap, Zhang Xiao often cries until midnight. All traces of the past workplace are left behind. The custom-made suit in the closet, and the indelible HR thinking in her mind: She uses a form to manage Pippi's recovery schedule, marking daily nutritional supplements and allergies; when she encounters a school that is not well-managed, she will do a SWOT for the teacher. The analysis suggested that they should strengthen their training.

She chose to hang up her resume because the days of "being in a dark tunnel with no end in sight" pushed her to the limit of her mental load. She received an interview invitation from a large local company and successfully passed the first and second rounds of interviews. After her husband finished dinner, she formally discussed the matter. He couldn’t believe that she had actually submitted her resume and kept asking: After three interviews, Should I go or not? How long can I wait to leave the child?

"He said you are the mother, you have to take care of me. This shocks me." "Extremely big, you can't tell me that my mother is like this just because I have sacrificed everything." Zhang Xiao, who could not give an answer, could only endure the regret of giving up the third try.

Later, she and There was a quarrel with her husband, and she questioned: "The salary for going to work is not lower than yours, and it is closer to home, so why can't the father take care of the baby? "These words were eventually rejected in a more intense tone. Pippi couldn't understand the quarrels, and it was difficult to speak. He could only anxiously stretch out his hands and try to cover his parents' mouths.

"Actually, I'm at work. She is the one who takes a breather." Zhang Xiao also couldn't understand. After Pippi was diagnosed, her husband, an engineer, seemed to have lost the ability to learn. She was worried about almost all the materials, lectures, and rehabilitation. It seemed that if she learned, this matter They would blame him. They were once college classmates majoring in equipment design, but the kind and loyal boy has become more stubborn than expected and believes that life is hopeless. When classmates talk about children, he runs away.

Notes taken by Zhang Xiao during her self-study of autism recovery

The reason why she switched majors from science and engineering to HR was also due to gender bias: girls just can’t draw pictures well. After graduating from college, she joined a well-known central enterprise through school recruitment. During the same period, the boys were the only ones in the workshop. She worked as a handyman in the office. The boss joked with her: "You girls go to the workshop, and those people are looking at the machines and staring at you, which can easily lead to danger." , "Including climbing on the roof of the train, it seems that women can fall off easily."

Unwilling to waste his life, Zhang Xiao threw away his iron job and jumped to his former company, where there were less than 2,000 to 3,000 female employees in the workshop. 1%, what she did was still similar to what she had done before, so she simply gave up and started over in the management department. "I never get tired of it, but I'm afraid of losing my job." It took her 7 years to achieve the same color as a PPT. Director, she had no time to miss her when she left her job, but this year her leader specifically asked her to go back and take a look. Those emotions suddenly came to her heart. She joked that she would not write a memoir and publish it in an internal magazine. "If I were told to publish it, I would really write it."

Indifference

New York Times reporter Ann Crittenden, author of "How Much Mom Is Worth: Why the World's Most Important Job Is Not Payable", once mentioned in the book , when a mother gives up her job, she has to use her losses to pay the "mom tax", but they don't even have unemployment insurance or compensation. "Mother's love is the most renewable resource in the world, but we still have good reasons to end the unpaid occupation of women's labor. This is called justice."

Achieving this kind of justice is not easy, according to "Working Mothers' The "Tear Index Research Report" shows that more than 70% of working women are prone to mood swings after becoming mothers, and nearly 20% are troubled by mental illnesses such as depression. The main reason is their husbands' indifference to women's efforts.

Lin Chen, who gave birth to twins in 2017, deeply felt the harm caused by this disregard just after giving birth. When she was expecting to give birth at her parents' home, she suffered severe bleeding and was so scared that she did not dare to walk up the stairs. She even asked a doctor to come to her home and give her a pregnancy-preserving injection for two months. At that time, her husband, who was working in a different place, was still nervous about her prenatal anxiety. After giving birth, she ignored the unrecovered wounds and took care of her two children almost all night long. Her daughter always vomited milk, and her son woke up at the slightest movement. Amidst the continuous crying, it was difficult for her to sleep for two hours a day, and she was almost exhausted mentally and physically. When I mentioned it to my husband on the phone, he was a little impatient - okay, I got it, he was tired too.

Recalling the morning when she held her daughter and watched the sky outside the window getting brighter, she said, "I had a pair of scissors at that time, and I might cut myself off."

"If it were me, I would rather work overtime than take care of my children at home." Previously, she was engaged in business interpretation and enjoyed the process of negotiating with foreign clients. During the three years of raising her baby, she was unable to explain her husband's complaints about mosquito bites or bumps. Even if he didn't do the housework well, he would blame her. After cleaning up, she felt that she was at ease at home. Lin Chen became more and more depressed as the gap fell a little, "I just hope he comes back and hugs me."

Lin Chen also blamed himself for the child's mistakes. One time when she had a cold, she took medicine and looked at her child in bed. She squinted her eyes unknowingly and was about to fall asleep when she suddenly woke up. Following the noise, she saw a broom hanging at the door of the kitchen. When she went in, there were cereals all over the floor. Chen Qi collapsed, and the child looked at her at a loss. While cleaning, she couldn't help crying. "All the children's behavior is the fault of adults." Lin Chen hated herself for falling asleep.

Lin Chen secretly wrote these difficult-to-relieve emotions in her online diary. She wanted to encourage herself in the diary, but sometimes she couldn’t help crying in the middle of writing, and the children beside her were also They were frightened and cried, but their mother cried even more sadly. They were a little confused, but later they learned to run hurriedly to get the paper and told their mother not to be afraid. If the father is present, even if there is no reason, they will hit the father, thinking that he bullied the mother.

Lin Chen's Diary

"If a person's nature is hard to change, I really can't change him." Her husband once drank too much at a party and smelled of alcohol. But she didn't want to take a bath or sleep in a separate room. She became drunk and went crazy, tearing down the curtains and smashing things. The child was so frightened that she cried loudly, so she had no choice but to call the police. The next day, the husband had completely forgotten what had happened. Life went on, and Lin Chen went about buying groceries, cooking, and taking care of the children as usual. Lin Chen never expected that her husband would become like this, but she still comforted herself in her heart, "This is probably what life is like."

Answer

In September last year, Lin Chen’s children started going to school. After putting them to bed, it was already after 11 o’clock in the evening. Her husband was still socializing, and she was alone in front of the computer. Download the resume form, and when you fill it out, you always feel like you are in another world. When interviewing for an exhibition secretary position, the little girl asked her if she knew how to use office. She said yes, and then she was asked about several unfamiliar software, which made her a little confused. The little girl told her that those offices were outdated and skills were no longer useful.

"I feel that I am so bad that I have no choice but to admit it." Seeing the stunned expressions of most interviewers when they learned that she had been vacant in the workplace for more than three years, she already roughly knew the result, and for a moment she thought I might as well work as a waiter in a cafe so I don't have to talk much. All the positions she applied for at that time were eliminated. The other half of the positions on the "dispensable" list were either given up because it was inconvenient to pick up or drop off children, or they really didn't want to go.

"I wanted to know if society needed people like me before I sent in my resume." She was actually not in a hurry to work. After understanding her situation, she was convinced, "I have no connections and my abilities are not big enough." "My personality is also relatively weak." She had thought about taking the postgraduate entrance examination or the public examination before, but when she saw the test questions, her mind went blank and she gave up. Now she is taking care of her baby and working part-time as a tutor, giving herself a break.

As for Zhang Xiao, who was carrying Pippi, it was still difficult to get a chance to breathe. After experiencing the chaos of various autism health institutions, she and a special education teacher established a studio in 2017. "I must combine 80% of the two things of motherhood and work before I can work." In order to save money With money, she cuts various teaching cards and makes teaching aids by herself, and is often busy until one or two o'clock in the middle of the night; she designs courses and practices with Pipi. Even if she is trapped in the mismatch between "mother" and "teacher", she is unwilling to be degraded by it. Require.

By 2019, the studio has expanded from a private house with a monthly rent of more than 2,000 to a single-family villa with an annual rent of more than 60,000. "I am not just a mother, but my job is to help children." "I even made money from it, which was great." But then the epidemic broke out and the studio was finally closed.

After that, in addition to occasionally giving course training to institutions, Zhang Xiao was once again trapped as a "mother". Until January this year, an institution sent an invitation asking her if she was interested in becoming a middle-aged (older than) 12 years old) patient training. Due to the difficulty of making a profit and the difficulty of teaching, there are few in the industry. Zhang Xiao took over. Pippi was 12 years old, just old enough to go. Her teaching ability has always been updated with Pippi's age. Mother and son are in the library. After more than three months of study, a new teaching plan was designed.

The night before she summarized the results, she was busy until about 3 a.m., and there was only one page left in the PPT, so she could only come back on her way to the institution at 8 a.m. Before going on stage, "If you push, the sleepiness will pass." As soon as it was over, that breath had passed, and a severe feeling of exhaustion came over me. If possible, Zhang Xiao would like to do music-related work. Those moments when she wants to escape are always there, but she knows that she can't let go of her children. "Cheer up and move forward."

After resigning in 2014, another mother, Tong Cuiping, chose to return to a familiar path at the most confusing moment in her life - taking the Ph.D. exam. Three months before the exam, her mother fell ill unexpectedly, and she was busy taking care of and begging for help. As a doctor, she did not give up preparing for the exam. After the written examination, I flew to Nanjing to take care of my mother who was hospitalized the next day. After my mother had the surgery, she was notified on the high-speed train back to Guangzhou that her written test score was lucky enough to pass the interview.

During this period, she opened a public account to write about her story of being a stay-at-home mother. Her first article about her life journey triggered a lot of shouts from mothers, and the number of reads exceeded 10,000. An article about the decision-making process of purchasing insurance for family members unexpectedly appeared in the media, and people came to discuss cooperation and insurance consultation. By chance, she became an insurance agent. "Export is the best way to learn."

Looking back on her past career as a working mother, she feels that as a woman, she has the right to choose the life she wants at different stages. After all, "there are still many possibilities in life."

Princess painted by Tong Cuiping’s daughter

Proofreading: Zhang Liangliang