A Reflection about the Lecture by Professor Yunxiang Yun

[Anthony Pollard]

     Remarkably, Professor Yunxiang Yun vividly illustrated the role "mom" had in the family heirarchy. Our students will understand a 21st century interpretation about gender and generation evolution we provide for them, especially as it pertains to mom. Mostly, we can understand our 20th to early 21st century acquistion of gender and generation knowledge because we have experienced this evolution. Professor Yunxiang Yun has exposed us to historical documentation of gender and generations study and exposures older than the societal teachings about family we experienced collectively in our young United States. It is not much different than what we already know about the beginning of teaching about the family unit in these United States. Our subject title "Post-Patriarchal Intergenerationality and the Remaking of Motherhood: The Interplay of Generation and Gender in Chinese Neo-Familism" suggests the evolution of the role of a woman in the family, which started a long time ago, illustrated through Chinese beliefs, which again is not much different than what has been experienced here in these young United States. 

     Professor Yunxiang Yun explained familial heirarchy as it relates to the woman's position in the family. Clearly, we adore our mothers, and our students do to. Throughout the centuries, our mothers performed the familial duties of taking care of children, working a job, working in the home, and obviously studying higher learning because moms needed to understand the subject matter in order to provide the needed support for the childrens' learning.

     Professor Yunxiang Yun used Ban Zhao's teaching for the background of guidelines for the woman's role in the family and society, illustrating the depth of gender realization and generational perpetuation, as far back in time as BCE. His exposition pointed out Zhao committed her guidance as a basis for the woman's respect in the familial heirarchy; and it evolved. We may even deduce Mao was positively influenced by women in the family because he propagated women needed a greater role in society (not just for child-rearing), not much different than what has happened in our 19th through 21st century America. 

     In Professor Yunxiang Yun's excerpt from his book, in the very beginning, he begans to expose the role parents and grandparents had for the growth of their children, their family (even though it may also have a religious motivation.) Respect and zouren can be attributed to the familial model, and the rise of the woman's role in modernistic society. We can mention these terms to our students because it is an aged old concept and a part of the American society too. A respect that may be loss because of the changing gender role of the woman in the family, is the idea the adult children should do more to take care of their aging parents. Professor Yunxiang reiterates a Chinese perspective "the most noteworthy is the state’s promotion of filial piety as a cultural asset...[important to passing] elderly care to adult children. In public discourse, some Chinese intellectuals have begun to invoke traditional familism as an indigenous value system to counter Western individualism...," implying individualism affects the familial unit, but only if "mom" allows it to happen becasue dads are still only concerned with earing money. In many cultural societies in America, mom doesn't let parents be neglected, whether her parents or his parents, thereby, strengthening the evolution of gender and generation.

     Overall, when teaching about gender and generationality, we can gather evidence from further back in time. It requires some interpretation on our part as teachers. Additionally, the synthesis of this information we choose to share helps students to learn to synthesize information from other sources, but common to our societal views.