Junior High School My Wife example essay topic

Having studied piano since she was in junior high school. my wife gave piano lessons to the children of the neighborhood after we were married. At the time, I was in my third year as an elementary school teacher; I had 40 students in my class. My salary was low (40 percent of it went to pay our rent), so I, like many other teachers at the time, supplemented my income by tutoring a child privately after school, something public school teachers are no longer allowed to do. At the time, it seemed more natural for a wife to do things at home rather than to be employed somewhere. There weren't very many "working women" then; in fact, there weren't many places for them to work.

When our son turned three there was a World's Fair in Osaka. He remembers us taking him to the pavilions, holding his hand tightly so he wouldn't get lost. The economy was strong at the time, so the salary level for government workers, including teachers, was scaled up almost 30 percent that year. Our hopes for a doubling of our salaries in three years was dashed by the first oil crisis, after which our pay was raised only 2 or 3 percent annually. Our daughter was born that year. There were rumors that goods were going to be scarce, so people began hoarding things like sugar and toilet paper.

I remember carrying home many bags of sugar at one time. At school, as well, each pencil and piece of paper were not to be wasted. The difficulties lasted only briefly, however. Our lives were focused on our children during those years. When they were little, my wife and I took part in traditional Japanese events with them, such as the bean-scattering ceremony on setsubun, the day before the beginning of spring; the Doll Festival; the Star Festival in the summer; and moon viewing.

Later, when they were in elementary and junior high school, we took them to historic sites and on hikes in the mountains. Once they neared high school age, though, we did less together as a family. Our talk turned to the children's studies and their achievement test scores in junior high school, which predict the high school entrance exam they are likely to pass. Both children went to private high schools, which are more expensive than public high schools. The financial burden on the family was especially heavy when our son entered a private college and both were going to private schools simultaneously. Those expenses made my wife begin thinking of going out to look for work.

Another reason was that many of the women in the neighborhood had already gotten jobs. She started by looking after other people's children and then did home tutoring and office work at a clinic, a delivery service, and a pharmacy. My first reaction to my wife's working was that she should be free to do what she wants to do. However, once she was out working, there was no one left to do the housework. Someone would have to do the things my wife had done until then: cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, and keeping the house in order. Since I was a member of the family, I would have to help out, too.

Things didn't work out too well at first. But I felt we would get used to the situation. While I understood that it was necessary for my wife to work, I also realized that I had never been trained to share household responsibilities and I began thinking that it would be nice if she could just stay at home. I probably felt this way because I had watched my grandmother and mother preparing supper in the afternoon when I was a child. Our two children helped as much as they could, but both of them had school activities and weren't able to do much. The state of the Japanese household seems much like that of Japanese society as a whole: there is a clear-cut division of labor, the children's duty being solely to study.

Things eventually did work out fairly well. We all did what we could on a given day, whether shopping, making a meal, clearing the table, or doing the dishes. Even so, there was often housework left to do when my wife got home. There are a number of positive things about my wife's going out to work.

She feels liberated from the repetitive nature of housework. She has lost the feeling of alienation she experienced after most of the other women in the neighborhood got jobs. She feels she is participating in society, she enjoys the human contact at work, and she is making an income, allowing her to buy things she wants and help with the children's educational expenses. She has also been able to catch up with the goings-on in the world of women's fashion that she had missed when she spent all her time at home.