Chinese Female With Parents example essay topic

As a male in present society it is easier to go from a child to an adult, than for females due to the fact that the society we live in is a patriarchal where! SSm an!" rules the public. Our general lifeline is broadly and stereotypically set for us by society, where we go to school and then enter the work force to support our loving families at home. This however is changing, women have come an extremely long way from what they began at until now where we have women at top positions and even surpassing males in the workforce. This is tough as a male to look at the ways a female must adapt and change throughout life to make her life the best that she may want it, and therefore I turned to my mother to assist me. Not to sound stereotypical, but for a Caucasian female to grow up in Canada with Canadian rooted parents, is much different for even a Caucasian female growing up in Canada with non-Canadian parental descent.

Therefore, my mother growing up as a Canadian born Chinese female with parents that came from China, made her adaptation, and willingness to turn into the woman she is today much harder than the average female. In this essay I used my mother to help broaden my horizon on not only the way women have paved their way to present day, but to see how my moms and her mom's lives differed from other females in that generation due to particular geographical and cultural background differences. I began by asking my mother when she first thought herself as a woman. She said, ! SSI think when I was about 19, because before that I still thought myself as a teenager due to the fact that I only had responsibilities of a teenager. I lived at home and stayed tight with my family until about 19, when then I began to date my husband and started becoming a woman by trying to be more independent.

!" This quote I found interesting because now a days we come across some ignorant people we see on TV shows and in the media where we have 15 year old girls saying they are more grown up than a lot of women out there and that they are prepared to take on woman responsibilities. This shows the change in society and they way the try to perceive women as young as possible, when perhaps they should let women appear as they want and not degrade on people appearing old or however they may want to. It shows that in my mothers generation, women weren! |t pushed into quickly becoming a! SSWoman!" or to have! SSWoman!" responsibilities, whereas now we have the pressure to be the American dream as quickly as possible and one way to get there is to look and feel young and beautiful. Then the question of her heritage was brought about.

I asked her what influence being a Canadian born Chinese made on her. She had plenty to say upon this topic, where she began, ! Ssi influenced the way I thought and how I grew up as a child because a lot of the things I had to do reflected on the Chinese culture, where we had to do old Chinese things, like praying and obeying superstitious codes. My parents were also pretty strict because they were very old fashion and had far eastern beliefs.

My parents always put into my head that first I was Chinese and then Canadian second due to the fact that we live in a place where appearance comes first and first impressions are important. They told me never to lose contact with my Chinese background and culture. !" This adolescent process for her was tougher than the average girls at school. Where my mother had to somewhat act like the others at school and then be her! SS true!" self at home. She continues, !

SS As I grew up, sometimes I was embarrassed of being Chinese because I was basically the only Chinese girl there, other than my sister, and it felt as if I was different. So I had to surpass two double standards where I was not only a girl, but a Chinese girl. !" Not only treated differently by being a Chinese girl in school, my mother was treated dissimilar than her brothers. Where in China boys were cherish more and were spoiled more than girls.

My mom states, ! SSI was then treated different from my brothers where my parents were more lenient towards them then my sister and I. They received longer curfews and different royalties than my sister and I. I was also expected to marry a Chinese man, whereas my brothers could marry anyone they pleased. !" This just shows the power that the parents in China like to inflict on their daughters. They want their children to have the best life possible, however, them giving guidelines to how they must do that was within the culture at the time.

This lifestyle of marriage is portrayed in a great book called the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, where she based her whole novel on how Chinese women, mothers and grown daughters go through persistent tensions and powerful bonds between generations, relationships and cultures. Marriage in old Chinese fashion was pre-set up by the parents, which is not what was done to my grandma, however, the general belief of staying within your culture was instilled in her head at the time, which made my mothers view upon men much narrower. From aside from being different for awhile, it's weird how no matter where you may go in the world, if one may ask a grown woman what were the most significant events that have occurred in their life; Most ladies will respond with at least one of the following: The bearing of their child or children, their marriage, or a big success story. My mother said hers were her children, her death of her father and her marriage, which I believe seemed typical and universal to almost all women in the world today. Roles amongst women have changed drastically in time. Where they have been housewives, volunteers, politicians, and!

SS the perfect wife!" , to present day where anything goes. I asked my mom whether she believed roles of women have changed. She states, ! SS Absolutely. Because times are changing.

More and more women believe they are highly independent and women are brought up thinking they are, where a generation ago a woman was just a housewife, having the man work. Now due to income deprivation or other reasons, women are starting to work not only for money but for their own independence. Society is also allowing women to fall into places in the work field more easily, not only because it is the law but because they DO have the same if not better abilities than men. !" In the text, Women in the World we see that by! SS 1960 the world had its first female prime minister in Sirimava Bandaranaike, Sri Lanka. In 1975, the First Black woman prime minister of an independent state: Elisabeth Domitian, of Central African Republic.

In 1999, Sweden became the first country to have a majority of female government ministers!" (p. 95). On page 100 we also see the slow increase of women in the armed forces across the world that seems minute, however, is a step from volunteer helpers in 1914 (Beginning of WWI). We can see how times have changed, by looking into priorities of women in present day and compare them to women of the past. I asked my mom if she would change anything from her past and she says, ! SSI would have completed my post secondary education, cause now education is important because it gives you the foundation of what you are wanting to do. It furthers your ability to accomplish certain goals.

However, I feel as though I! |m doing very well without educated skills. Where I am learning how to use things of higher technology on my own. !" This statement shows how education a generation ago wasn! |t particularly a necessity, where as today, at least some post secondary education is almost essential in creating success. Post Secondary school was also not particularly an option to woman of the 50's and 60's because many of universities in North America didn! |t open their doors to women until then, as seen on page 80-81 in the Women in the World text. As children we use role models to create miniature goals for ourselves so that we can say! SSI want to be like him / her !

!" Well at a younger age we usually have superficial people like Superman or Wonder Woman, however when we grow up, we analyze our role models and a lot of us turn to our parents as very strong figures in our lives that have helped us down every road. I ask my mother how big of an influence her mother made on her and she says, ! he had a lot of influence on me because part of the fact that she was born and raised in China during the depression and the occupancy of Japan. By the time she was in her teens, she had already gone through the death of her mother, starvation, the Japan / China war, Chinese communism take over, and then had the responsibility of taking care of her siblings. She left home at age 20 to come to Canada to get married and from there she learned English, where now she can speak fairly fluent English. She also lost her husband when she was 50, where she had to take care of her children, her store, and her in laws while they were ill.

She was an extremely strong woman. Therefore, she influenced me to be strong, because I felt as if I had to live up to her standards to a point and I always knew that if my mother could fight through such tough times, that I could do the same. As we went through class we looked at several feminist issues that women have gone through since the 1800's where women have try to take a stand towards their well-being and equality with males in the world. To get a more personal look on this I asked my mother whether there were any feminist issues that affected her life.

My moms response was, ! SS There definitely was, the emergence of the birth control pill in a very positive way, where this allowed the threat of premarital pregnancy to disappear. Pregnancy puts a womans life on hold, because it doesn! |t allow you to work, or finish school, therefore, your status is now a mother. Another feminist movement was when they designated Ms. as opposed to Mrs. or Miss where that gave us as women an identity, where we weren! |t owned by someone. Ms. meant to me that you were a powerful, feminine person in your own right. The last major issue, is abortion.

Where I believe a woman should be able to determine whether she should go through with the pregnancy or to terminate it, and the reason to terminate doesn! |t have to be a health issue or rape, it could just be that a child / baby doesn! |t have a place in her life at that point in time. !" After looking at problems that women face here in Canada such as rape and sexual assault, I wondered if my mother had ever feared such a thing in Canada. She stated, ! SS No. Not here in Regina, however when I travel with my sister or another female to another country, I take extra precautions to prevent such events from happening. I try to be aware of my surroundings to stay as safe as possible.

!" As we can see in the text Women in the World page 58, a fair amount of sexual assault events are recorded in Canada, a count of 24,049 of total police recorded events. This may seem as quite a lot, however, compared to other countries, Canada has one of the lowest sexual related reports per capita in the world. This I think is due to the knowledge, of both males and females, and due to the overall self-defense and precautions females are taking when leaving their homes or going somewhere that they might feel uncomfortable. This is fantastic in that with a statistic so low, it hopefully warns males that Canada is not a place where these degrading acts are tolerated in society. To finish my interview with my mother, I quickly asked her, why she thinks men and women are they way they are. She believed, !

SS Because of the history and the way people have been brought up to treat people of the other sex. They are the way they are because of culture, society, and mainly because of sheer genetics. !" All in all, the process of making this term paper was a brand new learning experience because not only did I get to know my mother and grandmother that much more in depth, but I actually got to use some of my learned vocabulary, terms and beliefs from Woman studies class. I got to read bits and pieces from different texts that showed different viewpoints of Chinese Canadian women that have either been born here or have exported here form other Asian countries. I believe being Chinese Canadian allowed me to look at this term paper and interview from a much different perspective then other classmates, which I think is great, however, can be tough to explain myself without being judgmental at times.

Having my mother come from a very strong Chinese ethical background made her into the strong woman she is, living in this Canadian lifestyle. For my grandmother, this was an even more tougher transition, where she had to come from her home country to an unknown land while leaving chaos in her homeland. Once she made it here she then had to raise four Canadian born Chinese children, that she knew would be highly influenced by the overall! SSwhite!" Canadian society.

This for anyone would be typically difficult. She now lives with my family and I, and has adapted to a lot of the! SS western!" culture here in Canada which she has learned practically all by herself. It is somewhat of a chain, where I look up to my mother for being such a strong person, where she could adapt to both the!

SSwhite!" and Chinese cultures with almost not a flinch. And then there is my mother who looks up to her mother, for being twice as strong, where she could go through two wars, starvation, communism, just to name a few. From getting the inside scoop from just two strong females in the world, I was able to broaden my awareness of the upcoming physical and mental strengths that women behold, which they receive through their independence, self-determination and never ending aptitude..