"Gender Watch" is not an egg on your belly.

I always remember the second year of primary school mother's Day, Ban for us a job: Take an egg, with cloth tied to the waist between a week, try to experience the hard work of pregnant women.

Since childhood love and the teacher, I received the first reaction is not resistance, home immediately to mother protested, "an egg can simulate pregnant women?" I was so small, why put eggs on the belly! "Remember mother comfort me, experience pregnant woman cautious feeling, also nothing bad, just try it."

For one, the boys ' eggs were all over in the first quarter of each other's derision (yes, the moms are responsible for cleaning the uniforms with broken shells and egg yolks, and we feel a little embarrassed in this game of only girls: "Boy's eggs are broken, do you want to continue playing?" "A few girls take down the eggs silently, leaving only a certain perseverance, a dull atmosphere around the girl still tied." A week later, her waist was still tied with eggs, she accepted the teacher praise.

I remember when she went onstage, there were bursts of laughter, "the hens are laying eggs!" Laid eggs! "The boys are booing, the class guide sternly stopped the group of male students," you are all out of the womb, don't laugh! "The other girls want this embarrassing farce to come to an end," she said.

I remember sitting on my own, vaguely feeling that being pregnant was a bit embarrassing. But the most embarrassing event was the 12-year compulsory education, the only time I experienced the "same pregnant woman" activity.

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Before celebrating Mother's Day: Do we know the plight of our mother?

Every year in the future Mother's Day, school activities do not take off the following: color paper fold carnations, write cards, painting mother, hold "my Mother" composition contest.

Now in retrospect, it was great to receive the same carnations and cards, and the mothers who still smiled. These canned American works are a sort of emotional blackmail for our mothers.

But can you blame the kids? No, the whole society has never tried to be the same as the mother, even as a woman or mother, often think that these difficulties are taken for granted, "we all come here."

The photo of the Hundred workers on May 8 released a mother's workplace documentary: Always want to have a child of the author, 30 years old before struggling to do the job, ask for even if the pregnancy is difficult to replace the position, the supervisor finally when, but after pregnancy she began to suffer all kinds of unreasonable treatment, colleagues were transferred to other departments, left her alone, Other departments assigned her to deal with the additional work more and more, the executive meeting was deliberately arranged at dinner time, do not let her eat or rest, on time to make plans, but repeatedly be difficult to withdraw. She found the pregnant woman very unfriendly, had to submit her resignation, four months pregnant, and began to look for the next job. After several waves, she finally found a job, a post, to start over.

Writing here, the author must also for the hope that the work of their own interpretation, because the community always questioned: pregnant women, but also work to do? She mentioned that when a female friend who has experienced a bright eye is temporarily withdrawn from the workplace, how difficult it is to return to the workplace: the career block, back to the birth of the executive post is not possible, can only lower the junior job, and no family in the low salary of senior engineers competition. The responsibility to take care of their children is still on the women and there is a second shift after work.

According to the 2017-year survey of women's marriage and marriage and employment in the main office of the Executive Yuan, the female 30-year-old has a marked decline in labor participation rate, about 14% more than that of men. 25% of women leave after childbirth, and return to the workplace only 55% of the reinstatement rate, equivalent to those who leave the mother, nearly half of the exit from the workplace.

The State and society require women to have children, in addition to cheap mother's Day cards and seat stickers, our system and culture does not provide sufficient support for the mother, public care is poor, must draw straws, private one months more than 30,000 of the costs, women in the workplace when the salary is lower than the private costs, often will be family " Rational persuasion ": Take care of your children at home. The subtext is: are already mother, also talk about what career pursuit, self-realization and so on.

Daughter please forgive me: Before the mother's identity, I was still a person

Friend A told me about a time when she was a child: her mother had run away from home a few times in her elementary school.

A's mother has always been a strongman, after a and her sister was born, the mother also continued to work in the workplace, while also managing the needs of two children. A said that every time parents professional survey, the mother of the column, there are 1/2 of students check housewives, she is handsome to fill in the name of the mother, she was proud. But she did not know that her mother was actually very tired.

A said one night, she heard her mother coming downstairs in the middle of the night, she hurried to follow up, said to follow mother together, sitting in front seat, she looked at mother has been crying, she asked mother how, mother said not export, just silently shed tears, said she was very tired, she asked her mother "How can I help?" "Mom told her that you are too young to help, but you will probably understand when you grow up."

A sitting in the car, thinking about how the mother can not be so sad, very young she does not know, this is not a problem she can solve. She is also from this only found that her mother was not just her mother, "My mother, like me, will be sad, will be tired, the original she is her, not just my mother." 」

Later, the mother drove a car a round in the night outside, or parked the car home.

A mother kept the secret for many years, and later she became a mother and mother to talk about the past, A's mother said that she was too stressed: both to be a great mom and to sprint in the workplace, but she thinks she's not really doing well in both ways, and no one can understand her stress.

A now a working mother, she says she is not unable to understand where her mother's impulse to leave was in a car that year, "to be a social expectant mother is a very suffocating thing." She sometimes remembers her and her mother's journey in the middle of the night, as if she had been away for a while, but in the end, they all chose to go home.

The other side of the mother myth: You are too selfish to have children.

In the political figures, the small child is "the national security issue", but did not come up with a matching "security issues" budget, but the cost of childcare costs to women. Not only in Taiwan, but also in Germany.

Cai Qinghua, Ph. D., a German writer Nicole Huber published in 2011, "No son: or why no one is not a social parasite." The book mentions a phenomenon in Germany (probably not unfamiliar to Taiwanese readers): "There is a strange paradox in the German government or in the civil society, where women are encouraged to go into the workplace, but those who are not in the workplace are considered selfish, or women who have children to re-enter the workplace are blamed for" Mother Crow "(Rabenmutter, a concept that has existed since the Middle Ages to accuse the mother of failing to take care of the child's responsibilities)." 」

At the same time, the book is more sharp point of "less child = Labor Reduced" blind spot: To increase children, all problems will not be solved, the country needs not only the people who have the ability to work, but also into the workplace (Germany still has many young adults can not put into the workplace).

In the 30-year-old traffic peak period, women are also facing the development of career, or marriage and children's "balance between the problems." Society does not expect men to be responsible for childcare, so "balancing problems" often falls on women.

Not only pregnant women, the hope that in the workplace to achieve their own female, in the 30-year-old job search or transfer, often have to face the problem of privacy violations. Friend B graduated from a prestigious American university, worked in a top American firm, and returned to Asia after getting married, and the most recent interviews often made her angry, as the interviewer usually asked, "When you're married, when are you going to have children?" What kind of work does your husband do? Do you need a family? "Friends on the phone that good," in the United States, these problems are illegal AH! And why don't men have to confront these problems? "There are others in front of her face taunt, your husband earned enough money, to be a housewife is not very happy?"

Cai Qinghua also mentioned that Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist, had done a study in 2015 to break taboos, and that she had visited women from the age of 20 to 60, and many mothers said they loved their children dearly, but when they lost their autonomy after their mothers, if they could do it again, There will be different decisions as to what they have experienced and what they know now. The study was later published in the name of "regret as a mother" (regretting motherhood).

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Empathy mother, start with the experience of mother

Because the role of the mother is mythological, sacrifice, selfless dedication, no regrets of the mother value like a magic spell, once exposed to fatigue, intolerance or even regret, women became a "bad mother", as if the mother only a kind, loving, selfless, like a template general.

Thus, even though half the population of the earth is female, the experience as a mother has not been well told, seen and heard. The picture of a happy family is already a lot, but before women make the choice of marriage and childbirth, they do not know the career dilemma that may be facing them afterwards, and the cost and information of motherhood have never been fully disclosed.

On the other hand, to be a mother must face various challenges, the efforts to overcome these challenges have never been visualized, they are not like career promotion, there is a clear and specific title, to mark this person's exploits and shine.

Writing here, I suddenly think of my mother after my brother and I have been working in the workplace, I never asked her carefully: work during pregnancy, what has your body experienced? What is your experience as a mother and a worker? How do you do it? Have you ever been tired?

I secretly opened line and asked my mother these questions I had not paid attention to. I'm a bit ashamed to begin this year's mother's Day with the experience of learning about my mom.

Women are obsessed with a lot of articles in the past, and the same mother can start by reading these articles:

• What mothers need is not a celebration of Mother's Day, but space, dignity, choice
• Both sexes have to come forward! Workplace moms and Super Milk Dad's gender dilemma
• "Gender-selected book" Literary Female Youth This disease: child, I am just your mother.
• "Sex Watch" Why do some women hate having children?
• "Gender Watch" I am the old woman, I want to be born when it should not be a bad thing
• "Sex watch" Janet pregnant should not go to Mongolia? Why is everyone entitled to "educate their mothers"?
• "Women's film review" "mother chain" Welcome to the production and reproduction of the hell and Heaven
• Very short stories | In those years, I watched women suffer in maternity wards.
• The happiness of a woman | Childbirth is a duty of the state, not just a woman's.

On Mother's Day this year, instead of preparing a card cake or a feast, tell your mother, you read these articles, you want to know these years, she walked the efforts and footprints, from here to open a dialogue, but also a gift for their mother's day, is not it?