Manufacturing versus services
Being stuck between the previous and next generations, a position he describes as being like groping through thick fog, Huang hopes that he and fathers in his generation will figure out for themselves what kind of parents and men they are.
The traditional image of families, with fathers working long hours outside the home and mothers taking care of the household, was very clear and easy to figure out. Times have changed, though, and the role of fathers has changed with them. After becoming a father himself, Huang began to wonder about what it means to be a middle-aged father today.
Making use of his journalistic experience, he set about talking to others around his age, like author Luo Yijun, Buffalo Bookstore owner Luo Wenjia, and Yan Mingxin, operator of Petite Jasmine Parent–Child Reading Group, to create a composite image of a Generation X father.
Huang remarks that the authoritarian style adopted by the older generation’s fathers was really just a result of their being busy with work and having little time to spend with their children. “Since they didn’t spend time with their children, they didn’t understand how to get along with them,” he says. Because of that, they never really even hugged, let alone sitting down and talking with one another. By way of example, Luo Yijun explained that he and his father barely had any physical contact, barring spankings when the younger Luo was naughty; the next time they really had contact was when Luo had to give his bedridden father sponge baths after he suffered a stroke. Huang’s wife Yuan Yingshan had a much closer relationship with her father, but even she had little memory of hugging her father until she did so out of a fear of heights when traveling with him as an adult.
Fathers of the newer generation, though, are different. They’re more willing to express their emotions both verbally and physically, sometimes to an embarrassing degree. “Underneath all this is a desire by fathers of my generation to not be as traditionalist as our own fathers were, to not treat childrearing like a production line. Instead, we are more ‘client-oriented,’ running a ‘service’ to satisfy our children’s needs,” explains Huang.
Those older parents were used to trying to force their children into particular molds—Huang, being a strong student, was slotted into the “doctor” category, while his brother, who was more hands-on by nature, was assigned the future job of “engineer” by their parents. The new generation of parents no longer try to choose their children’s futures, and instead try to encourage the children to find their own passions.
And with women increasingly becoming the breadwinner, more fathers are spending time with their children, which is, in Huang’s opinion, unquestionably a positive trend. The old days of “her indoors,” when the husband made the money and the wife ran the home, may be on the way out, but as Huang says, his decision to leave work and take care of his children resulted in many a raised eyebrow.
As material conditions in Taiwan have improved over recent decades and double-income families have become more common, society’s expectations of fatherhood have also begun to change. “These changes don’t have to mean that both parents are always busy with work, though. They also create the possibility of fathers and mothers sharing the household workload,” says Huang. “If gender equality is an indicator of a civilized society, this can only be a good thing.”
Throughout his reflections on his childhood and familial past, the main focus was always on the real head of the house, his mother. With his father rarely around even before he left without a word, Huang has relished even more the opportunity to be a father. “Parenthood has a clear shelf life.”
Huang readily admits he has no firm methodology for childrearing, and doesn’t presume to have written a guidebook for parenting. Writing the book was more about looking back over his first half-century, as well as a way of saving something of his mother. “If reading this book makes readers think about the people in their own lives, then that’s good enough for me.”