Post Date December, 03 2023
Recently, a couple of post-80s married only half a year in Changchun, Jilin Province, were separated by a dispute over who would return to their hometown for the Spring Festival.
This is of course an extreme case. However, for couples who live in different places, "who will return home during the Spring Festival" is a knotty problem. Especially at the moment when more and more only children are married, this contradiction has become a "minefield" in the relationship between husband and wife, reflecting the troubles in the social transformation period.
This is the trouble of collision between tradition and reality.
A story is thought-provoking. The man received a call from his mother in his hometown: "Son, tell his daughter-in-law to 'marry the chicken and follow the chicken'. It's a wise thing to go back to his mother-in-law's home for the New Year. Otherwise, your father and I will lose face in front of relatives." The woman's mother was unhappy at the news and said to her daughter, "Ask your mother-in-law who is a family planning cadre. When she preached the national policy of family planning, didn't she say 'The times are different, men and women are the same'?"
This is the pension problem of "empty nest families".
At present, about half of the 178 million elderly people over 60 years old in China live an "empty nest" life and suffer from the pain of "old people are afraid of empty space". Therefore, the Spring Festival, which emphasizes family reunion, is particularly important. However, there are more than 200 million only children in China, and the number of "421" families has increased. A small couple faces four elderly people, obviously lacking in separation skills. At present, the socialized pension system, which is mainly based on home-based pension and supplemented by institutional pension, is more about life care and lack of spiritual comfort. There is no corresponding service to alleviate the childlessness of the elderly during the New Year.
This is also the trouble of the couple's "working without a certificate".
In the past, in the atmosphere of strong familialism, marriage played the role of serving parents and inheriting clans. Now, China in the transition period is experiencing a "core family transformation", that is, a shift from parent-child relationship to marital relationship. The feelings of both spouses are increasingly valued by individuals. Unfortunately, in the face of the new situation, most couples do not have job training, lack the guidance of modern marriage and family concepts and skills, "love at first sight, married. In anger, divorced", and the phenomenon of flash marriage and divorce is increasingly prominent.
The picture of the Spring Festival is a happy and peaceful one. If you are unhappy about "who's home for the Spring Festival", or even divorce, it will further weaken the reality of traditional festivals. In this sense, "one family, one child, who will return to the family for the New Year" is not only about family harmony, but also about social harmony, which is a proposition that needs to be solved.
In this regard, relevant government departments should strengthen the construction of elderly care service capacity, innovate service methods and enrich service contents, such as organizing empty nest elderly to travel for the New Year. Children should pay attention to the spiritual support and affection nourishment of their parents. It is good to go home for the New Year, but it is more important to always miss and care for their parents. As an old man, we should also be considerate of the difficulties of our children, think in different places, and combine traditional concepts with modern consciousness.
A happy marriage is not a marriage without problems, but a marriage that is good at solving problems. Both husband and wife should have a sense of learning, understand that they should make choices before marriage, and do not agree with their values, such as those who are serious about male chauvinism and feminism; After marriage, we should negotiate more, understand more and tolerate more, and then we will have wisdom to "untie a tangle of hemp".
