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jinx13
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| Joined: | Tuesday March 13th, 2007 |
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Posted: Thursday March 22nd, 2007 07:36 pm |
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I wanted to share with you guys something that my girlfriend Nataly recently wrote for her University 'Psychology' class. She was asked to tell a little about her life and discuss gender roles, her family and culture. I think this kind of info is very imformative for men seeking a RW, you get an idea of life from her perspective...I hope you enjoy.
I was brought up in Ukraine. My family lives in a two bedroom apartment in the small city of Sumy. I have a sister, mother and father. My family is very traditional. As a child I remember my mother always was teaching me and my sister how to cook, wash dishes, clean house, wash clothes (we did not have a washing machine and it was a whole new science "How to wash right without washing machine") My mom would always tell me and my sister that women should always know how to do these simple things and to be a good wife. My mom was doing everything around the house and my father worked at three jobs and earned money for life. My mother did not work outside the house, not because she did not want to, but because it was difficult to find a job for her even though she has a higher education. She has masters in electrical engineering. I remember she always used to say that woman's job is to take care after her husband, do housework, etc. As a child I partly agreed with this, but when I was growing up I started doubting all these things about family roles she told me before. It sounded almost like a wife should do everything for husband and men are not supposed to do any housework at all. My father is the head of the family and he usually did not do much of the house work because he was working a lot, but the strange part is even though my mom got a job now she is still supposed to work and do house chores at the same time. The woman who goes out to work, whether she be single, married, widowed or divorced, bears a domestic burden which even if considerably lighter than in the past is unevenly distributed between the sexes. The working man, irrespective of whether he marries or is a bachelor, almost invariably has female help for the domestic chores. The working women on the other hand, usually have to do these things not only for herself, but also for one or more other persons. "Family responsibilities" therefore fall roughly into three categories;
1) Husband and home
2) Children
3) Aged parents and relatives
So "woman's responsibility is her home" (Darling 1975:66), while man feels above household is work" (Malachovskaya, 1985:31)
I think that Russian men have more power and freedom in Russian society and "The traditional male stereotype is seen as more complementary.” I would say that "the belief that the male is the norm" is right for the culture I was brought in.
Most Russian boys are brought up in a very different way than Russian girls. Girls are taught from a very childhood that their role is to take care of the family, make husband happy, do housework, etc. Very often women end up in the situation where they end up doing all the work, not only taking care of the house and family but also actually earning money and feeding the family. There are a lot of families where men drink and don’t work at all, indeed they just beat up their wives and sell everything they can from the house to make money for vodka and get drunk. I would say Russian women have masochist trait in their character; they try not to leave their husbands even though they drink all the time and don’t do anything to support the family. I think this partly happens because of 2 reasons:
1) There are more women in Russia than men, and so it makes it very difficult to find a good husband. Men are very picky because there are a lot of beautiful women in Russia that try to find a good husband and start a family.
2) I think the way Russian girls are brought up makes them responsible for their family. Because they are told from childhood that they are supposed to be good wives and devote themselves to the family and children. That’s why most of the women stay to live with husband alcoholic because they want a father for their children. They often sacrifice their life in the name of the children.
The men are taught from the childhood years that a "real man" is the one who can earn money. In my mind it puts a lot of stress on the men because if they are not successful in the job they feel guilty that they cannot provide for their family. I think that can be one of the reasons why they become alcoholics. The second reason is that wives or mothers sometimes overdo their role taking care of their husbands or male children. Sometimes mothers do everything for their children. Some mothers do all the cooking and washing for their children that are over 24 y. o. To the point when they even give out money to their grown up sons that should already have a job on their own. I think that makes them incapable to get a job, be responsible for their own life and feed his own family.
"The idea of male breadwinner is well established in Russian culture. In pre-Revolutionary peasant culture a son was seen as a future provider for the family, while it was expected that a daughter would marry and leave for the family. This was reflected in the upbringing of and parental attitude to boys and girls: girls were unwelcome, while boys were valued (Pushkareva, 1997); an attitude that can be seen in such pre-revolutionary popular saying as, "Feed your own son for a while, the time will come and your son will feed you"(the person who would do the feedings was, of course the mother). Another saying equated the husband with a fifty kopek piece (a substantial sum of money in the nineteenth century) and a woman with a piece of cloth "they go together and so live well"(Mikhailov, 1988). This identified women with domesticity and men with money." I would not say that the roles of men and women changed a lot with time. I noticed slight changes on that view in people of younger age, but I would say that most of the older people are very traditional and follow these gender roles.
I think I have a lot to say about the gender roles and stereotypes in my country, but I have to make my report to match the guidelines, so that’s why I decided to discuss culture differences between my country and USA. Culture is a very important definition in psychology. I say this with full understanding of that sentence, as a person who went through the cultural shock, here in USA. So what is culture? Looking in the book I find this definition: "A system of meaning that is shared learned, passed on, symbolic, and systematic." In my own words I would say culture is the way people live. Culture is a word with a huge meaning behind it: culture makes people think in different ways, celebrate different holidays, have different religion, goals, even dreams. In my mind different cultures can shape different dreams and values.
I want to tell a little bit about myself in this section. As I said before, I was born and raised in Ukraine and never traveled outside my country or lived outside my parents' house till I was 20. I met a lot people from foreign countries though, because my major in University was English and German. I tried my best to learn it and so I needed practice with native English speakers. These native English speakers always seemed like interesting people to me. There was something unique in all of them, something people from my country did not have. I always enjoyed talking with them. It was like a window to other countries and cultures for me. I enjoyed looking at their photo albums: neat streets and their big houses, always happy smiling faces on the pictures. I dreamed to travel and I wanted to come to USA all my life. I never thought how many different obstacles I would have to overcome, leaving my country, family, friends, facing whole different culture. I just had that yearning for seeing something new and the thought of staying in my little town for all my life seemed really scary to me back then. So if you try a lot you get what you want. And when I was 20 I was on my way to USA, I won my visa in the lottery, Green Card Lottery. It really seemed impossible to get American visa for me. If somebody would tell me that I would win that visa lottery from the first time I applied, I would never believed it. It is really difficult to get American visa for Ukrainians and there are mostly two ways for immigration: first way is mostly only for women- fiancé visa, second you can go on the student programmed and get a working visa for four months. Well there are must be some unknown ways as well, because the rich people are able to go when they want.
I felt the impact of the new culture right in the New York Kennedy airport. You know, one of those taps in the bathrooms that have sensors, and when you put your hands under it the water turns on by itself. It is really funny to think about it right now, but I spent about 10 minutes figuring out how to turn on water and it seemed bizarre to me that I could not even turn on the water till some lady that was observing me with a great amount of interest decided to help.
Turning on water is just one of those little things that one does without thinking at all and there I was just trying to understand how to turn on the tap. It was just a first hint on how different our countries are. On my very first day in the USA I had problems that people who have lived here all their life would find totally absurd. I could not turn on water in the shower, could not open a window, I did not know how to use can opener and just simple things like that, things that Americans do without thinking in their own country. There are little things you never notice when you are in your country, but when you leave, you suddenly realize how much you miss this comfort of knowing where everything you need is situated. I mean stuff like food, some medicine maybe, things like that.
The most scary part of the cultural shock though is that not only you feel lonely without your family and friends but with some time you just start thinking that people around you are completely different and even weird in a way and you just feel like you are from another world, you don’t want to see anybody, you don’t want to talk in English ( because even though you know language pretty good, it is still not like your native language, so you cannot express all your thoughts in words, that means you are not on the same level of understanding with people around you)
As we have learned, USA has individualistic culture - "culture that places high value on individual attainment, independence. The central element in this culture is the individual." My culture is collectivistic-"culture that places high value and importance on group and interdependence. Group orientation and consideration are key in defining oneself. I believe people raised in different cultures have different views on life, family; they have different values, etc.
I have a lot of examples to prove it. First of all let’s just see how children are raised in these two different cultures. In USA newborns have their own room and often a nanny to take care of them. As they grow up they tend to be more independent than their Ukrainian peers. They are often taught to be leaders and aim for their goals. That just some of the things I noticed working as a nanny. In Ukraine newborn children don’t have their own room; what’s more mothers try not to leave them alone with a nanny. We don’t need nannies because in our culture family members would stay with the child.
American teenagers usually want to move out from their parent’s house as soon as possible and start independent life. Ukrainian teenagers are often very dependent on their families. A lot of families live together in one little one room apartment and sometimes children stay to live with their parents even after marriage. A lot of Children take care of their parents when they are old and live in the same house with them. It is not normal for Ukrainians to place aging parents in to retirement homes, it is considered to be a shame for the children to do so, because it is not just about their lives, family members must take care of each other and feel closer to each other than families in USA. In USA mothers would not spend most of their lives babysitting their grandchildren and their children would not spend long years to taking care of their parents when they are old, they just send them to retirement homes. I think in collectivist cultures family members tend to help each other more, than in Individualist.
Other example: In American schools copying somebody’s test or homework is considered to be really bad, and it is a shame for somebody who does such kind of things. First of all nobody will even let him to copy their homework that they did. In Ukraine it is a shame if somebody would not let you to copy their test or homework, those people that don’t share with others are considered greedy, and nobody wants to have any friendship with them.
I made just a few examples but you can already see how different our cultures are, and how difficult it can be for somebody with collectivist culture background to get used to living in the USA. A lot of people just cannot make it and come back home, even though the quality of life here is much better than in my country.
Americans seem like very open people to Russians, but after a while of living in USA I can see that people here are more reserved. They don’t invite you to their house to meet their family unless you are very good friend of them. In Russia people invite almost everybody they like to meet their family.
There is a trend in business - cocooning. "Cocooning is the name given to trend that sees individuals socializing less and retreating into their home more. Individuals tend to stay away from society and lack in social confidence leading to 'cocooning'." It is very popular in America nowadays, people just want to stay home. When I first saw American streets it really surprised me that there are no people walking everywhere like in Ukraine. Of course there are a lot of people in the malls and downtowns, but on the regular streets there are a lot of cars and just a few people walking by, I could not believe my eyes seeing that. In Ukraine people are everywhere, maybe because we don’t use cars that much, we walk more and take buses. I think we leave our houses much more often, and here, I really felt like I was closed in four walls of the room I was renting. I think individualist culture is more reserved. Most of the people from this culture live in the saying:” My home is my castle", and in my culture “home” is important too, but we put more value into our relations with people and our social well being, than in the place where we sleep and eat.
There are a lot of differences between our cultures, but I think that it is very important to experience new things in the life and learn about new people and cultures. If you live all your life without any big changes it becomes dull and boring to the point where you stop enjoying it as much if you do when you have some obstacles to overcome. As they say in Ukraine you cannot taste sweetness of the honey till you try the bitterness of the ointment.
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ronin1
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| Joined: | Saturday January 21st, 2006 |
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Posted: Wednesday April 11th, 2007 05:25 am |
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Jinx,
The story of how Nataly was raised should be an eye opener for any WM that are truly searching for a traditional. It confirms much of what is written of RW and their thoughts of what are proper roles in a family. Indeed, This kind of thinking could have come from many AWifes of the early 60s.
For those WM that are looking for a traditional wife with a twist, then RW maybe for you.
Jinx, Thank Nataly for this fine contribution. Her thoughts on culture shock are also well taken.
Thanks,
Ronin
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RQRose
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| Joined: | Monday October 27th, 2008 |
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Posted: Tuesday October 28th, 2008 06:46 am |
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This was both fascinating and enlightening.
Thank you!
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