Are Chinese wives more obedient to their husbands?

Post Reply New Topic

Are Chinese wives more obedient to their husbands versus their western counterparts?

I am an uncle to a half-Chinese niece, since my brother who lives in China has a wife who have both had recently, a lovely daughter, and the wife seemed to confirm that there there is a cultural idea that women, namely maiden or married women in particular in China, are supposed to be obedient to their husbands and also other male family members such as sons or fathers.

Apparently this comes from the "three obediences and four virtues", rooted in confucianism.

From Wikipedia:

"Three Feminine Obediences

The Three Obediences instruct that a woman is obligated not to act on her own initiatives and must submissively obey or follow:

1. her father at home, before getting married (Chinese: 未嫁从父; pinyin: Wèijiàcóngfù; or Chinese: 在家从父; pinyin: Zàijiācóngfù)

2. her husband after getting married (Chinese: 既嫁从夫; pinyin: Jìjiàcóngfū; or Chinese: 出嫁从夫; pinyin: Chūjiàcóngfū)

3. her sons in widowhood after her husband's death (Chinese: 夫死从子; pinyin: Fūsǐcóngzǐ)

The Four Feminine Virtues are:

1. Feminine Conduct (Chinese: 婦德; pinyin: Fùdé)
2. Feminine Speech (Chinese: 婦言; pinyin: Fùyán)
3. Feminine Comportment (Chinese: 婦容; pinyin: Fùróng)
4. Feminine Works (Chinese: 婦功; pinyin: Fùgōng)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Obediences_and_Four_Virtues

This didn't change under Communism???

Maybe only in China.  I've known a few immigrant Chinese wife/mothers in the 'States, and they can be just as "feisty" as any woman from any other culture/ethnicity.

Of course, when you have met one Chinese woman, you have met ONE Chinese woman -- they are not an homogeneous people.

Communism didn't fix Russia's sexism either.



So what you're primarily describing is a set of traditional paragons for how a gender is expected to behave. Not all societies write their expectations out so clearly, but that doesn't mean China's traditions are radically out of line with a lot of other societies, at least during some period during their history. Maybe some portion of Chinese society might be stereotyped in that way, but then there's the Mosuo people who are matrilineal and don't seem like they'd treat feminine obedience to a husband as a virtue.

When it comes to how much agency and autonomy women in a society receive (like a lot of other matters), the norms and expectation of the cultured class don't always penetrate a society very deeply. This is especially true before mass media. A lot of societies have traditional norms that might almost be seen as pampering women, but very few households had the income to make that a normal lifestyle so most women both had to work and had to deal with all the limitations that resulted from those norms.

That said, there's always been women who reject varying proportions of those limitations, whether as part of something broader or just out of personally not being willing to deal with some specific limitation.

If you're asking about the question on an individual level there's a bunch of factors beyond just what a society idealizes when it comes to how people relate. Even within a society with deeply misogynistic views of a woman's place, the power dynamic just might not allow that view to be more than an ideal. If both partners labour is needed to continue to keep food on the table, that tends to somewhat lessen the power imbalance. A lot of societies have both misogynistic traditional values and strongly ingrained tropes about feisty women because their ideals require a greater power imbalance than widely exists.

There's also the role face plays in Chinese culture. A wife might publicly adopt the appearance of being obedient, but it doesn't mean that the disagreement won't be revisited in private.

I'm under the impression that obedience in general tends to be highly emphasized in Confucian influenced societies.

So, tl;dr version: It's possible that at least as a general trend they might be, although I wouldn't try to make that assumption about any specific Chinese wife because there's a lot of factors beyond cultural ideals to consider. I'm also skeptical of whether obedience is a virtue in this context.

My general impression is that there is a dichotomy between public and private, by which I mean that "traditional" (such as that is) Chinese women present that image publicly, but are anything but obedient in private. As far as specific insight into this is concerned, I partially base that on my son's relationships with Chinese or ethnically Chinese women, beginning with his HS girlfriend who would keep him on on the phone after midnight, apparently scolding him, as we could frequently hear him seeming to beg her forgiveness. His wife is very quiet, but we have the impression that whatever she says basically goes. Although I really hate having to deal in such stereotypes, so I apologize to anyone I may have offended; nevertheless I can see how there may be some merit to debunking any sort of myth such as Chinese women being obedient.

Thank you for the reply, FXE, I generally agree with the points you made in your post.

Maybe there's just a more clearer mutual respect in some marriages

I don't know if it's specific to just Chinese people though or maybe it is a cultural thing as well

I might as well say that anything like this triggers me to some extent. There are a lot of overseas Chinese where I live, I've known quite a few in my day, and to me they seem a very diverse and down-to-earth group. Just deal with them as you would anybody else, and you'll be fine. The only specific thing I'll say is that Chinese society is grounded in Confucianism and is consensus based. Even so, that matters more when trying to understand China itself than when dealing with individual Chinese.

Too bad so many "leaders" on both the left and right seem determined to get us into a war with China, one result of which is that negative stereotypes of Chinese are now encouraged. I fear the day is coming when simply having relatives or close friends in China will put one under suspicion.

I used to live in China for a while and that's definitely a real thing, there is a lot of that where you don't know who's dating, and you don't know what's going on at home. You may not even know who's married at times as wedding rings aren't always worn. I found the entire thing to be somewhat confusing as an outsider and I definitely still don't completely grasp how it all works.

On top of that, when I was over there like 10 years ago, there were multiple types of marriages being practiced. And attitudes towards adultery seemed somewhat less than uniform.

Definitely not. I'm definitely not an expert, but that's not at all what I saw. Some Chinese do and some don't. As a society, there seems to be a lot of variation in terms of how marriages work, although the big things that seemed fairly consistent were dating being done largely in secret and that matchmakers get many years worth of good luck when they set up a couple that winds up getting married. Most of the rest of it seemed to vary, a lot.

In addition to everything that's already been said, there are many ethnic tribes, each with their own cultural norms.

One tribe, for example, is matriarchal and there is no marriage as we know it. Men are allowed to visit (or denied) but live at home with their family of origin and may never know which children are theirs as all children are raised by the multi-generational family of the mother.

I take issue with how the question has been posed. If Chinese wives were "more" obedient that implies that non-Chinese wives might be less so, but still "obedient." Wives should never be obedient at all.

Was that funny in some way? I am absolutely serious.

You basically showed everyone the elephant in the room. Sort of made me laugh at the situation. Like everyone was debating a ridiculous premise then you stood up and called them out on it. You certainly got the last laugh!

One of the local customs was that if a man stepped on a woman's foot, he was liable to have some explaining to do if he wasn't wanting to be with her romantically. I assume there was a bit more to the custom than just stepping on a foot, although it was in a less populated area where that was much less likely to happen accidentally.