[LMB] Single children (Was China)

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, James Nicoll wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, Laura Gallagher wrote:
>
> > In China, you have a pre-existing heavy focus on the son,
> > further focussed because a baby boy will be the ONLY focus of
> > two parents, four grandparents, possibly up to 8
> > great-grandparents (or however many are still alive).
> > There's a lot of potential, I think, for insufferably spoiled
> > boys.
>
> When my niece was over there, the phrase that got tossed around
> was "a generation of emperors."

I was told by several Chinese and Japanese women that my crazy
third husband (who was from Hong Kong) was a classic example of
what eldest or only sons tend to be like--selfish, unable to take
direction, spoilt, given to tantrums and expecting everyone but
especially females to drop everything at his least whim.  (He
managed to hide this from me during our courtship.  How I'm not
quite sure...)  I was told that if I married another East Asian
man to marry a younger son--they're easier to live with.

On the other hand, women don't like these men and they often have
a hard time finding wives.

So combine a whole generation of men like this with the fact that
there are very few young women in the generation, and I predict
that a lot of them will recruit wives from outside (mail order
brides are popular with guys like this in Japan) and a lot more
of them will get their attitude adjusted really quickly, because
I'm *already* hearing that a young unmarried Chinese woman in her
early twenties can more or less cherry-pick any of the men she
wants and that young women have a great deal of social power
because they are scarce.

~malfoy :)

****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Morley