The Giant Fork

During the bustle of this morning, I asked my son why his sister ate her egg with a giant fork (I put a normal sized fork to compare in the photo) to which he replied that she probably thought all of the silverware was dirty in the dishwasher. Just ten minutes earlier, my son was also wondering whether the dishes in the dishwasher were clean. Several days earlier, he told me in alarm that there was only a half roll of toilet paper in one bathroom and a quarter of a roll in another.

Leaving the Children to my Husband

In my odyssey to collect stories of working mothers in Taiwan, I allowed my children to go home on a plane by themselves at the end of December while I stayed for one more month to finish my fellowship. They were thus alone with my husband for one month.

During that time, my daughter texted me that she lost a bit of weight, they were eating lentils constantly, and she did not have clean clothes to wear. At the same time, she and her brother got better at taking care of themselves. Both learned how to cook pancakes from a mix, and my son would wash dishes he used and sometimes my daughter’s because my husband would just leave them in the sink.

Reintegrating Back into my Family

Despite my announcement this morning that the dishes in the dish washer were clean and that because I was home, there would almost always be clean dishes (and at least 30 rolls of toilet paper in reserve), they shared the tradeoffs in our parenting styles. My style gives them pressure of maintaining cleanliness–my husband allows the recycling to amass into an overspilling, ceiling high disaster, never once reminding my son to take it out. For me, once it spills out, I start reminding my son and, if he drags his feet, I insist that he do it before eating our next meal. Both children appeared to relish the amount of relaxation and non interference they had with my husband’s parenting style.

I recognize the benefits of my husband’s method–I knew that my children would survive the month without me, and moreover, they would grow up a little faster. And indeed, just as long as the egg gets into your stomach, does it matter that you use a giant serving fork to do so?

God sent versus pig partners

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Working mothers in Taiwan often refer to their partners as either “god sent” (shenduiyou) or “pig like” (zhuduiyou), which is an evaluation of their partner’s help with family and household ranging from excellent to extremely underperforming.

Sometimes the slotting of the partner into the god sent category is by appreciating their complementary skills to parenting. TW15 noted that her husband allowed their children to play in the mud for hours. Although she felt this was unhygienic, she appreciated that her children were thrilled.

Sometimes the working mother nudges her partner into the god sent category. TW20 needed to teach her husband to avoid stacking the bowls one on top of the other after washing them; otherwise moisture gets trapped and the bowls do not dry. Her husband would nevertheless forget, and she would have to remind him again. If there had to be a third reminder, she would start yelling. I liked this example as I happened to be teaching my son this same lesson, which seems so obvious, as we had no dishwasher in Taiwan.

At other times, the nudging might take the form of successive difficult marital disagreements, as TW5 noted, in order for the partner to intuit the need to step up care efforts.

And finally, one can lower the standards for a god sent partner. Since TW25 had to work several evenings, she noted that her husband often fell short of her expectations of the number of homework problems he needed to cover with their children. She finally decided to allow him to cover a few essential ones and either let the other ones go or she would attend to them when she had free time.

Of course it is extremely rare for a partner to be 100% pig as it is to be 100% god-sent. Putting the partner in the god-sent category appears to be a matter of both actively encouraging the partner and also actively managing what one wishes to achieve. Now that I’m back in the US, we will return to many of the things I expect for my household, but I am willing to let go of some others.