The roles of Chinese American male changed in historically and positively throughout the years. Since the day that the patriarchs first step on the American soil, they managed to live with their culture and tradition while growing up in a culturally diverse American society.
Nowadays, they are viewed as a multiracial person with a very positive outlook in life. The culture of both societies is a good combination that brings out optimistic values in various aspects of life. While growing up in a fast paced American society, they can still look back with their roots and origins. The Chinese values are still with them that they manage to survive a complicated society of America.
While American society seems to be a liberal and tolerant society, Chinese culture are known for being conservative, traditional yet progressive. The positive upbringing of Chinese is a virtue that is being passed in throughout every generations living in United States of America. This virtue helped and will help the new generations to be not confused on their roots while living in a fast-paced and modern society of America.
The last two centuries have witnessed incredible changes in every part of Chinese culture and society, from nationwide politics to daily life. At the height of daily life, some of the most clear and amazing of these transformations have affected, or occurred in, the realm of gender. As such, it certainly shapes appreciations of sex and sexuality, but it also helps into the composition of many other aspects of Chinese life.
Inside unisexual settings, men and women willingly recognize those qualities sought-after in a good spouse. For women, it is someone who is healthy, tall, strong, kind, brave, intelligent, well-mannered, and handsome, and who has a fine position and could offer for a family. Men’s representation of an ideal wife, not considering of class, is more wide-ranging. Like women, men favor someone who is healthy, tall, and kind. If at all possible, she should also be soft, beautiful, loyal, well-mannered, virtuous, industrious and skilled in domestic arts (e.g., cooking, sewing, and most important, child rearing).
Within the home, assumptions about sex dissimilarities carry on to structure the sexual division of labor. Men are accountable for heavier tasks, such as buying and transporting coal and bottle gas and carrying the family bicycle upstairs, whereas women do most of the shopping, sweeping, cooking, child care and clothes washing. However, a person is more than the total of the cultural suppositions that structure the sexual distribution of labor. The meaning of matrimony in the American Chinese society has shifted, so that matrimony is no longer based on opposite sexual division of labor but as a substitute romanticizes the love match. Chinese American men of today are expected to be independent enough to know some basic household chores. Because of a fast-paced society, they already learned how to wash their own clothes, prepare foods and clean their rooms.
In arranged marriages, if a couple respects one another they frequently struggle to maintain mutual kindness. Nowadays, arranged marriages are no longer applicable. In a modern society of America, it is the couples’s choice whether they want to get married or not. Parents no longer argue with their children to whom they will get married. Moreover, even having a baby out of wedlock is no longer a big issue.
Roles in sexuality are another means by which affection is expressed or withheld and intimacy given or denied. It is obvious that women in general control the rate of intercourse in marriage. However, nowadays men respect the decision of the women if they don’t like to have sex with them. Chinese American now respects the choice of women in reproductive health. This is the respect on the mutually over the decision in making love and having a child.
Aside from basic responsibilities at home, Chinese American nowadays are also in the forefront of politics. Nowadays, they are expected to exercise their civil rights, such as to vote and be voted, to form and lead organizations and to be involved in socio-civic activities within their communities or in a national scope. This is a big change several decades ago, wherein migrants and minorities like them are not considered in equal-footing with the Americans and are just left behind in every major decisions of the State that may directly or indirectly affect their lives. Chinese American that are now holding high positions in the bureaucracy and elected in various positions in the government is a testimony that they already emerged as a major political bloc, a major shift on their gender role.
In the path of careers that Chinese American men chose also changed dramatically. Before, they are expected to learn how to earn a living for they will be the bread winner of their own families in the future. With this premise, the path that they should chose should be financially rewarding and stable. They should learn how to manage their own businesses and know how to make it bigger. If they are employed, they are expected to be in managerial positions in companies. However, today even the paths of careers chosen by few before are being chosen by Chinese American men. The burden of choosing a greener path of career is no longer a pressure. Many of them are now in the field of performing arts, literature, music, teaching, volunteers in non-government agencies and leaders of political organizations. This is another breakthrough and major shift for the Chinese American men.
I think I fit in the idea of the Chinese American male of today. I know my roots, traditions and cultures. I even tried to practice some on it, not because I believe on it, but out of respect of my origin. I see myself years from now, being able to live with my culture and pass it on my future children. In the American setting, the division of labor based on sexes is continually diminishing. The society is relatively liberated on this aspect. American men are expected to know the roles usually reserved for women. There is a folk belief which holds that too much sexual activity is unhealthy, yet this already don’t hold much to new generations of Chinese American men.
Years from now, the idea and expectations on Chinese American will change. And the next generation will be able to cope with it. A proof of one of the values we have, being dynamic. In a society far different from we originated, it is very important to be dynamic and be able to cope up with the changes in the society. Every generation has its own focus, demands and issues. No one should be left behind in the rough changes in history. The gender roles in every society are dynamic and susceptible to change and Chinese American are not an exemption on these.
