05/01/26 - People will only work if they have hope.
A commenter left a post in my comment section which basically goes something like, “Marriage is the best shelter for poor women. It lets them have kids who can take care of them.”
I didn’t have a chance to reply before they deleted it.
Here, I want to say with all the solemnity I can muster (and I am not a very solemn person) my personal observations hanging around a hospital for years.
As far as married patients go, I had two female patients who were deliberately antagonised to death while receiving chemo. I’ve seen 70-80-year-old female patients come to the hospital for chemo alone, or have to hire a nurse to take care of them because they’re too sick.
Honestly, there’s not many female patients being taken care by their husband or kids (though there are some). And patients whose family actually take good care of them and have a good attitude is even rare.
But there are plenty of male patients who have excellent care taken of them by their wife (or girlfriend) or kids.
I remember a female patient around the same age as me who was already in bad health and still had 2-3 kids. Then she was diagnoised with carcinoma in situ, and neither her husband nor her brother wanted to support her treatment, so she let it go for a year.
Her husband and her brother banded together to prevent her from seeking treatment.
Her mom travelled in from out of state and said she can’t give up. And the old lady took her to the hospital to see a specialist and get surgery.
“The day she got surgery, only her mom showed up. I can’t imagine what kind of life she’s been living all these years…” a certain doctor sobbed. “The pathology report is out. It’s not very malignant. But she’s so old…so worn-looking…”
“Yeah, I know. A bad marriage will make a miserable life even more miserable. And I know why her husband and her brother didn’t want her to get treatment, because they both felt that she’d already fulfilled her purpose in having kids and can’t create any more value, so they gave up on her.” In the end, I thought about it and tried to comfort them, “At least someone steadfastly chose her in this world.”
Whether male or female, putting all your hopes of retirement in your children is a very high risk gamble. Marriage has never been a safe harbour for poor women. In fact, it might be a whirlpool that sucks them down to even darker depths—like being exploited for their last bit of value (reproductive value) and then being abandoned by society and their family.
In a traditional marriage, women are often asked to take on unpaid household labour and having children, but never receiving equal economic returns or respect. When a man loses his financial ability or doesn’t want to take responsibility, women become the most direct victims. Not only do they need to support their family on their own, they might not be able to leave a terrible marriage for financial reasons, and fall into a desperate situation where they can’t leave but can’t make anything better either.
And putting hopes of retirement in children is even more uncertain for poor women. First of all, having kids and raising them requires a huge investment of money and effort. Poor women almost never get the support they need in their marriage. They might be malnutritioned during pregnancy, or lack the medical resources or education while child-rearing, causing their children to be very limited in development. And a child’s willingness to take care of you is far from guaranteed.
Nowadays, young people face ever greater pressures of survival. They might not be able to take care of their parents. And even more cruelly, some children might become a burden on their parents due to lack of education or bad influences, much less be able to take care of them.
What do I want to say in the end?
The safe harbour for poor women has never been marriage or children, but independence and lucidity. It’s only when women have their own independent finances and the ability to make independent choices about their life that they can actually control their fate.
Society needs to break through the binds of traditional values and provide women with equal education and employment opportunities and social safety nets so that women no longer have to rely on marriage and children as their only hope.”
First comment is from OP: “Some people are freaking out and accusing me of lying, saying what good care they take of their mom. What I wrote was very clear, “Not a lot of female patients are taken care of by their husband or children (though there are some), and actual good care with a good attitude is even rarer.” Whether these angry people are one of the “even rarer”, I don’t know, but someone so autocratic and quick to anger that they would freak out online and try to use individual cases to deny my near 10 years of observation as a patient probably can’t take very good care of others.”
“Everything OP said is true. I’ve worked at a rehab facility before, and all the patients who come are men and their spouses take really good care of them. We get so few female patients, they’re maybe only 2%. It’s not that women don’t have the same illnesses, but they don’t have the opportunity to come to a rehab centre. A lot of times, their family won’t even agree to them coming for a tour, much less staying to get treatment. And none of them have a spouse that takes good care of them.”
“When my mom had a heart attack and was in the ICU, there was a totally paralysed lady in the bed next to hers. I go visit my mom every day and stay until the ICU kicks me out. Her husband only checks on her for a minute max. He’ll just be like, “Oh hey, uh, I gotta leave.” One time, we went down in the elevator together, and man, was he happy on the phone.”
[Lately, a girl got boba tea from Chagee and found mercury in her boba. Today, it has turned out that the police investigated and found that it was her boyfriend who put that mercury in her boba.]
There’s a screenshot of the initial report of the event, which reads, “After the event happened, the store in question responded that there’s no way mercury can appear in the process of making boba tea. “There’s no way we’d have something like that. We’re very concerned too and we’re working with the police and the Market Supervision Bureau. We’ll see what their investigation concludes.”
“At 8PM on the 27th, my boyfriend ordered a boba tea at Chagee and brought it into the store for me.” Ms. Zhang said in an interview on the 28th of April. “The first two sips, I didn’t feel anything wrong, but it started tasting grainy towards the end.
Ms. Zhang realised something was wrong and tried to spit the strange material out.
What confused Ms. Zhang was that if it was boba, she should’ve been able to chew it. She said, “I figured it wasn’t boba, because I couldn’t chew it and it kept moving around.”
“I realised it was mercury after spitting it out. It doesn’t break apart and splits into tiny little beads.” Ms. Zhang explained. “I called the store right away and they said they’d call me back. I didn’t wait for them to call me back and just went back to the store, but they won’t admit to it. They said it was impossible and told me to call the police.”
A blogger has a take on this, “At first, everyone was mad at the girl, saying she’d scripted the whole thing about finding mercury in boba tea to extort the store. People even made fun of her description that the first two sips were fine but it started tasting grainy.
Well, the plot twist is here! The police investigated and found that it wasn’t the boba tea place at all, but her boyfriend who poisoned her!
The boyfriend ordered the boba tea. He handed it to the girl himself. He snuck in the mercury intending on blaming it on the store and letting her take the fall.”
Comments say, “His goal was premeditated murder.”
“Next, we’re gonna have a bunch of “smart people” farming this event and telling people, “Don’t date, don’t get married!””
“I haven’t seen any reports that it was her boyfriend?”
“Chengdu car accident driver arrested on the scene. On the 1st of May, the Chengdu Police Station Traffic Management Bureau released an announcement:
Around 5:20PM on the 1st of May, there was an accident in Gaoxin District, Jiannan Road in our city. After receiving the police report, law enforcement quickly organised manpower to arrive on the scene and worked together with 120 [ambulance] to rescue injured persons.
After initial investigation, Mr. Li (male, 31-years-old) was turning right in a small sedan at the intersection of Jiannan Road and Tianfu Fourth Street when he hit a pedestrian. Afterwards, Li attempted to flee the scene, and ended up crashing into other cars and pedestrians in his attempt to flee. The accident caused a total of one death, and 11 injuries of varying severity. So all, all injured persons have been taken to the hospital for treatment.
After the incident, driver Mr. Li was arrested at the scene. After initial investigation, Li is suspected of fleeting the scene of an incident. Testing has eliminated driving under the influence. So far, the incident is under further investigation.
The police reminds please do not spread pictures, videos, or untrue information about the scene to avoid causing further damage to the deceased’s family and the injured.”
[There are comments here, but the comment section is hidden and I can’t read any of it. But there was a lot of speculation online that this wasn’t an actual hit and run but indiscriminate vehicular mass killing.]
“Why do we worry about lying flat? We’re not worried about one person lying flat, but a collective lying flat. There’s no avoiding individuals lying flat, but it’ll be a disaster if it spreads to an entire community.
For example, if hundreds of millions of people don’t work, then who’s going to pay social security? Our social security works by young people paying for old people. As soon as young people stop working and stop paying social security, the balance will be lost, there won’t be enough fresh blood in the social security fund, and the retirement crisis will get worse.
At the same time, all the benefits are going to suffer too. The more people that lie flat, the less societal wealth is created. The more people lie flat, the less they spend, the less taxes we collect. This is going to affect a lot of people’s benefits.”
Comments say, “You’re not going to change lying flat without changing distribution. People will only work if they have hope.”
“All the peaceful, happy people are panicking now.” [Taken from a famous saying, “There’s no such thing as peace and happiness—someone else is just carrying your burden for you.”]
“All the people lying flat are trying to stop other people from lying flat, because if they lie flat too, then the people lying flat won’t be able to lie flat anymore.”