Seminar 01-To be married or to be happy?
Currently, in China, people are getting married later and later, especially in metropolitans. In the meantime, the number of women who are over 27 and still single has been increased considerably which become a social hotspot. For those women, people name them in a very humiliated way “Leftover Women”. It is undeniable that there is discrimination from general public to this group. Besides the social pressure, these women have to deal with a problem which is more intractable — the disappointment from their parents.
In the first glance, for all these women, it seems like the easiest way, or even the only way to fix this problem is to find someone and get married as soon as possible. But will it satisfy everyone?
First, let’s reflect about the essence of the problem. Why do women need to get married? It is quite simple to answer this question — to build a family and finally live a happy life. Besides that, why there is a conflict between them and their parents because of their marital status? Because the parents care their child/ children too much.
These parents, or even the entirely society, take “getting married” as a standard of living a happy life. But what will happen if a woman comprises while facing the social and family pressure? She may randomly finds someone who seems suitable for her and sets up a family without genuine love and serious consideration. Then, after she gives birth to a baby, due to the apathetic relationship between her and her husband, she devotes most of her affection on her child. Year after year, her child will grow up and will become her spiritual pillar. At the same time, she will gradually “become” her parent, who feels supremely disappointed and sad when his/her child could not get married at the “appropriate age”.
Thus, the problem becomes a vicious cycle — a paradox, in this context. According to the video, in the program, with communication, most parents finally chose to respect their daughters’ choices. But for me, this outcome was not good enough since the problem was only solved temporarily. The solution should not be either of the two sides choosing to lower their own expectation since the conflict was generated since they were expecting the wrong thing.
Now, time to reframe the problem.
As the mutual expectation of both parents and women is that daughters can live a happy life through getting married, the context should be defined as “life”, instead of “marriage”. If they can reach an agreement that there are multiple standards to measure life. Within this new context, there is even not a conflict between “not getting married at a early age” and “having a happy life”. Meanwhile, if a woman concentrate on personal growth and self-actualization instead of hunting for a male, she will stand a bigger chance to find her true love and set up a healthy, happy relationship since it is obvious that a mature, optimistic, independent woman would be more attractive to men.
Besides that, no one should set up his/her happiness based on others’ choices, even for parents who are doing nothing wrong but just love and care their children too much. If parents can live a enjoyable life by self-actualization, the tension between parents and children would be reduced to a great extent. Thus, to ameliorate the family pressure to single women, besides enhancing communication between parents and them, people should find a way to propaganda a more positive attitude towards life. Then the conflicts may disappear itself.
