Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been showing Little Miss Sunshine to my film classes.  As part of the discussion, I divided my class into six groups and had each prepare a short presentation about one of the members of the Hoover family.  In my second class of the day today, the group assigned to discuss Sheryl, the mother, said that they thought she was a bad mother because she always brought takeout home for dinner instead of cooking.  When I asked if they understood why she did that, they readily stated that it was because she was busy working, and they also acknowledged that the family needed her income.  When I asked whether it was then fair to blame the mother and not the father, I was met by a lot of silence followed by a couple statements about how men can’t cook.

Now, the vast majority of my students are female; to the best of my knowledge, this is fairly typical of English departments in China.  All of them intend to have careers and probably would have to even if they didn’t want to given the economics of this region.  I worry about the kind of life they’re being set up for with such beliefs.  Even in places where most young college women would at least theoretically recognize the basic unfairness, there’s a gender imbalance when it comes to housework.

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