My 60-year-old father-in-law insisted on having a second child, making the whole family uneasy. It’s been seven or eight years since this happened…
2020, the COVID-19 pandemic. My father-in-law didn’t mention it anymore, and we all thought the storm was over.
Who knows, this year, the three-child policy is here.
Fertility problems have become an “epilepsy” for our entire family, devastated and incurable.
I’ve had enough and don’t plan to be silent any longer.
On the night of July 1st, my wife and I had a fight. She collapsed, hugged me and cried, then dropped her shoes, kicked the stool, smashed my computer, and asked again and again, “Am I a burden to you?” She still didn’t allow me to answer “no”.
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
I was wrongly injured. The cause of the incident was not me, but my 60-year-old father-in-law who wanted a second child and was tossing the whole family. From mother-in-law to wife, persistent depression and intermittent breakdowns.
Speaking of which, it took seven or eight years before and after. The wife is the only daughter in the family. When she was still in love with her, the state announced the two-child policy. One day, she suddenly told me that my parents were getting divorced because my father insisted on having a second child.
I laughed out loud. Having children again at an age, raising and educating them is a big problem. I comforted my wife, this is just a momentary fever of the elders after the arrival of the New Deal. At the age of my mother-in-law, it is almost impossible to have any more children. The risk is too great and life-threatening.
It turns out I’m still too young. Many times reason does not persuade obsession. In the next few years, my father-in-law tried almost all methods: going out for a long time, trying to adopt, visiting a reproductive hospital, filing for divorce… In consideration of face, my father-in-law and mother-in-law never mentioned this private matter in front of me, and as a son-in-law, I There is no way to put a beak. All he can do is pretend to be deaf and dumb, and try his best to make up for his wife’s collapse.
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Only I know that my ex-wife, who was gentle, generous, and appropriate, was actually a disguise. Deep down, she is extremely sensitive, vulnerable, and insecure. There is no other reason, because she was born as a girl and she was almost given to someone else.
She must work harder, better, more sensible, and more filial than others since she was a child, to prove that her parents gave birth to her instead of having a second child is the right choice. But no matter how hard you try, there is no way to change the obsessions hidden in people’s hearts.
After 2011, the country released the two-child policy, and the father-in-law’s obsession to “have another child”, which had been hidden for many years, was activated. The family that was originally plain, harmonious, and calm, just jumped around every day.
On May 31, 2021, the three-child policy was announced. Over the next month or so, the pressure developed to its peak.
At the worst of times, my little family was falling apart every day. At work, my mother-in-law broke down and called her wife to cry. Then my wife broke down and called me to cry. I have to pick up her phone quickly, whether it’s an important meeting or a paperwork. Otherwise, back home, there will be a new big crash.
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Hours of crying is the norm. My wife couldn’t sleep all night and didn’t allow me to sleep. Later, fights like the night of July 1 became no accident.
She feels like she’s become a liability and doesn’t accept comfort in any way. Because of these irregular crashes, I had to commute to and from get off work on a regular basis, arriving late and leaving early, and commuting 2 hours a day on the road.
But, I am human too! After a sleepless, arguing, and exhausting night, I still had to go to work and drive. I’ve gone wrong, who’s going to take care of me? Yes yes, I know that’s what a partner should do, a husband’s responsibility, and I know there’s something to be done as a man.
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I know that compared to the previous generation, or over a long period of time, these hardships are small things, right? But the golden sentence said that the collapse of adults is the accumulation of countless small things.
Most of the time, I’m calm on the outside, but I’ve already been in an uproar inside. I kept yelling at myself in my heart, you can’t collapse, if you collapse, the whole thing is ruined. But I have seen that the collapse is waving to me not far ahead.
I’ve had enough and don’t plan to be silent any longer.
My wife’s hometown is in the mountainous area where Yunnan and Guangxi meet. In far-flung places, people believe in “more children, more happiness”. In the early years, limited by the strict family planning policy, people only gave birth quietly and kept a secret about the second child.
After the announcement of the two-child policy, the wife’s aunt and father-in-law’s sister-in-law immediately went to the reproductive hospital for IVF. The next year, this nearly 50-year-old rural woman came to the door with a big fat boy to show off: “Look, I can do it. She (mother-in-law) is younger than me, so why can’t she give birth?”
(IVF surgery. Photography: Biyu Zou)
This smug rural woman hides the fact that she has two IVF babies at once. One of them was lost due to physical problems, and the other was saved with great effort. In order to raise money to have a second child, she asked for an extra 100,000 yuan from the man for her daughter’s dowry.
The relationship between my mother-in-law and her in-laws has always been bad. When the wife was born, the in-law’s family reluctantly gave the baby away as soon as they saw that it was a daughter. Grandpa and grandma said: “Even if you don’t have a public job, you have to have another one.”
The mother-in-law took it and did not send her daughter away, nor did she want a second child. She said that she was afraid that her daughter would suffer from a second child. I admire her courage, but this has also become the reason why she, as a daughter-in-law, has had bad relations with her in-laws and sister-in-law since then.
Actually, to some extent, I can understand my father-in-law. He is the eldest son of the family, and the most promising. He walked out of the poor mountain and became a teacher in the town. As the eldest son, he wants to build a house for his parents and arrange life for his younger siblings. In the eyes of the villagers, he is excellent in everything, except for one thing – no son.
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Old custom in the mountains, if there is no boy, it will be regarded as the last generation. The grandparents and the villagers quarreled, and the father-in-law went back to mediate. The other party scolded him: “You are the one who has no descendants. You can’t even enter the clan grave when you die.”
My father-in-law’s only daughter is married to me thousands of miles away. I understand the bleak heart of his successor.
Two-child and three-child policies followed. In the father-in-law’s unit, many female colleagues who are over 40 years old have gone to connect the fallopian tubes and have children. This made him even more unacceptable emotionally: “Why can others (have a second or third child), but not me (wife)?”
He certainly knows why not. My mother-in-law was in poor health and had major surgery in her early years. Now she suffers from high blood pressure and high blood lipids, and her health index is worrying. In order to have a second child, my father-in-law took my mother-in-law to a public hospital to see a doctor. The doctor took his mother-in-law’s laboratory test form and asked his father-in-law in the first sentence: “Do you even want your wife’s life?”
Photo source: Zhanku Hailuo
Of course he knew he couldn’t kill people, but he wasn’t going to stop there. From my father-in-law and my mother-in-law to me, the two families were restless because of this, and there was no good day. Who can I blame?
Blame those relatives who have created an ignorant public opinion environment and show off that they have given birth to a second or third child? That’s what their environment, native education brings to them. You cannot rewrite their cognitive base. Blame the father-in-law’s colleagues for actively responding to the call to have two children and three children, creating the illusion that “a 50-year-old woman can still give birth”? Birth is a personal freedom, you can’t interfere.
Blame father-in-law? It seems to work. But in his whole life, apart from being obsessed with this matter in recent years, he has always been a model son-in-law, a model husband, a model father, and a man praised by all relatives and friends. he is kindKuanhe, I have only been obsessed with this thing in my life.
You can’t blame him for his obsession with “having a successor, having a foundation, and keeping the homeland”. It was I who uprooted my father-in-law’s pearl and carried it thousands of miles away. After he died, his bloodline on this land really didn’t exist.
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The mother-in-law finally compromised, and followed her father-in-law to the private reproductive hospital, where she was hospitalized and waited for a week for the test tube. Before leaving, she secretly called her wife: “Your dad has treated me well in his life. If something happens to me, it’s like I’ll give him my life back.”
IVF was certainly not made. On the third day of hospitalization, after many injections of drugs, many indicators on the mother-in-law’s body were still seriously exceeding the standard. The private reproductive hospital was frightened and told them to be discharged immediately: “Go back, we can’t do it.”
Photo source: Zhanku Hailuo
But is the farce over? not at all. The father-in-law still had a long cold war with the mother-in-law and refused to talk to his daughter on the phone again. He couldn’t say what he wanted, he could only toss it over and over again. Of course I understand that he also knows rationally that this is wrong, but he can’t heal himself emotionally.
The end result is the story I told at the beginning. All the pressure was passed on to my wife, and I ended up taking care of it. I can’t say that this is the consequence of the three-child policy, but because of its arrival, my life is uneasy.
Of course, the bizarre stories don’t stop there. There are obstetrics and gynecology experts among my relatives. In my limited life, I have seen and heard too many tragedies related to fertility.
In the 1990s, family planning was serious. Many relatives secretly went to have their fallopian tubes connected in order to have a second or third child. A cousin gave birth to two extra children, but they were both daughters. Because of the superbirth, her newly built brick house was demolished, and her husband lost his public office. She took her two superborn children to hide in Tibet, and lived by sewing bibs with a profit of 2 cents per piece. Working late into the night, she was so sleepy that long and thick sewing needles pierced her fingers.
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
Are more children really blessed? If you are born, but do not educate well, and do not fulfill the responsibilities of parents, is it fair to the child?
My cousin’s younger son, who just turned 18, was tricked into going to Myanmar, where his ID card was seized and forced to labor. The children didn’t go home for Chinese New Year last year. The careless cousin didn’t realize it until June 24 this year, when the child escaped and crossed the border to return to China.
Children are quarantined in Ruili and may face 3 months in prison. He didn’t know that when he was looking for a job, he had to confirm the other party’s qualifications, and he didn’t know that he was deceived from Shenzhen to Kunming, and then from Kunming to the border. He had to be a little bit guarded – all of this was because of that year. He only cared about the father who gave birth to him, but did not teach him even the most basic ability to recognize this society.
Maybe in another place, what happened to my son, I have already flown to Ruili. But my cousin didn’t care. He drove a truck, drank alcohol every day, and sent his wife who was playing mahjong at home to the police station to ask about the situation, that’s all. The 18-year-old child who was born by him back then doesn’t seem to have much to do with him.
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
After getting married, when I go home during the New Year’s holiday, I always have to face “kind” inquiries from relatives and friends, “When will you be born”, “Your parents can’t wait to have grandchildren”, ” There are three things you know about being unfilial.” I resisted the urge to flip the table again and again, until my cousin said to me with a mouthful of alcohol: “I’ll help you count the days and make sure you hit the spot.”
Oh, one shot. This is my hometown, and people have a crude, crude perception of fertility. What kind of thing is the reproduction and inheritance of human beings regarded as? I really can’t say it well. It’s just that a friend of mine is about to have a child, and his wife negotiated the terms with him: “Having a child for your Lao Wang family will delay my work for two years. I have calculated it, and you must make up 300,000 yuan for me.”
Sounds ironic isn’t it, fertility is considered a business. But this society is full of malice towards women who are married but not pregnant. Last year, my wife went to a listed education group for an interview, and a female director in her thirties asked her face to face: “If you are pregnant, will you be aborted (for work)?” I can’t believe that this is something that a female professional can say if.
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Now my wife is trying to conceive. But looking around at the loss of dignity due to fertility issues, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is it necessary to bring children into this terrible world?”
At the beginning of 2020, when the father-in-law and mother-in-law had the most trouble because of the second child problem, the new crown came. Under the epidemic, the two elderly people depended on each other for life, so this matter will not be mentioned. When we all thought the storm was over, the three-child policy came.
Father-in-law has stopped calling his wife. In the last call between the two, he said: “Because you don’t support me (to have a second child), the fate of our father and daughter in this life is exhausted.”
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I know that, as a human being, there are cognitive limitations. With the ability and cognition of father-in-law and mother-in-law, there is no way to solve the proposition of “have another child”.
But human beings cannot control the need for emotional catharsis. So their daughter, my wife, became the last resort for all the emotions and stress from the family of origin.
She has seen multiple psychiatrists. During many nights of tossing to the end, she cries and pulls me: “Why should I bear all this? Am I not human?”
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
After the announcement of the three-child policy, many friends complained: the general idea is that in the past, it was forbidden to have children, but now it is impossible to have children, and it is impossible to have children.
In a way, I am also an indirect victim of the three-child policy. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the policy because it doesn’t force anyone to have children. What’s at issue is our cognitive base of fertility, as well as social emotions.
Even though I can’t blame it, it still caused me huge trouble.
Many people, including me, have lost their dignity and decency when it comes to giving birth.
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