Different Values between Now and Past

張貼日期：Mar 31, 2012 9:54:46 AM

Emily Wang

“When will you want to get married?” “How many children do you want to have?” “Which gender do you like your child to be?” Those are some popular questions that people like to ask. However, modern people and past people usually have different answers to those questions. It is because people in different times have different concepts or values about marriage and childbirth. Older generation and younger generation have different opinions about the right age to get married, the number of children a family has, and the gender of their kids.

First, people in different generations have different opinions about the right age to get married. Most elder people think that young girls should get married before 25, and boys should get married before 30. Some women in the older generation even got married when they were 16 or 17. It is because the medical equipment was not effective and progressive then. The life-span in the older generation was shorter. Those elders thought that they ought to get married as young as possible so that they could have a son to carry on the family name. Nevertheless, people in the modern time think differently. Many women get married when they are 30 or even older, and men may get married around 35. That is a very big difference between people in different generations. Many modern people think that their jobs or interests are more important than being a wife or a husband. Because of this different concept of the age of marriage, there are some different opinions about having children.

One of the different concepts about childrearing is the number of children. People in different times have dissimilar opinions about how many children they should have. The older people think that it is necessary to have many children. They think it is better to have more and more children. Because most past people worked at farm, they needed to have more kids to help them to do the work on the farm. In nowadays society, many young people do not think that they need to have a kid. Even if they really want to be a mother or a father, they may just want to have ONE child. Also, some modern men and wives who have both great jobs and salaries do not want to have any kids. They are called DINK. They are not bothered by the problem of having a son to carry on the family name; they just want to enjoy the life of two people, which was almost impossible to happen in the past.

As to gender, there is also big dissimilarity between now and past. The past society is a patriarchy. It was a male-oriented society. People in that kind of society think that men are more important and greater than women. Therefore, most parents in the past hoped that their child was a boy. To their opinions, girls who were married were just like sprinkled water. However, in this age, parents seldom have this kind of sexist thinking. They think that every child is a treasure. No matter if the kid is a boy or a girl, they love the child and give their love to him or her as much as they can. Many parents even like girls more than boys; some of them want to have a girl wishfully. Furthermore, women also have more rights nowadays, and they have more chances to show their abilities than before. That is one of the reasons why some modern people think that there are more strong points to have a girl child.

Because of the change of the times, people in different generations have different thinking about the age of getting married, the quantity of the kids in a family, and the gender of the child. Although the changing brings some problems, like fewer babies or late pregnancies, these changes also let some unfair concepts and practices disappear gradually. In nowadays society, people have equal opportunities to demonstrate their abilities, and men and women can have more fair chances to have competition with each other.