“If mom and wife fall in the water at the same time and they are both the same distance away from you and neither can swim, who do you save first?” This is a question for men.
For women, the question is “Dad and husband” instead. The question has nothing to do with moral evaluation, and this scenario would never happen in real life, but is purely a measure of a person’s psychological maturity.
The controversial psychological “weaning” test –
The classic question:
“If your mother and wife fall into the water at the same time, and they are both the same distance from you, and neither can swim, who do you save first?” This is a question for men. For women, the question was changed to “Dad and husband”. The question has nothing to do with moral evaluation, and this scenario would never happen in real life, but is purely a measure of a person’s psychological maturity.
Response 1: Disgusted, even angry, refused to answer, or thought the question was boring.
Response 2: Save Dad (Mom) first.
Answer 3: Save your dad (mom) first, then jump into the water to save your husband (wife), and if you can’t save him or her, we’ll die together.
Answer 4: Save your husband (wife) first.
Westerners mostly choose to save their spouses
In group counseling on self-growth, Tong Meimei, director of the Women’s Counseling Research Center, often arranges this classic test. She says that answering this seemingly difficult question reflects the maturity of one’s psyche, “The current national problems of mother-in-law-daughter-in-law relationships, extramarital lovers, blue-face confidants and many other problems can be traced back to the essence behind this question – whether you have ‘psychologically weaned’?”
Tong Meimei analyzed that a man is only half a person, and a woman is also half a person, and their task in life is to find their other half, merge them into one ball, and roll with life. Westerners mostly choose to save their spouses, while among the Chinese only a few women choose their spouses. In the Westerners’ view, they and their spouse are one and the same, and the one who spends the most time with them in their life is the other half. As for the other half of the father is the mother and the other half of the mother is the father, together they are also a complete ball.
Tong Meimei believes that choosing a parent symbolizes the child’s insertion into the parental relationship as a third party. The first three responses above, all of which actually choose the parents, represent the same inner issue: the child and the parents are knit together as one and cannot be separated. Among them, the degree of answer three is relatively lighter and more psychologically mature; the degree of answer one is relatively heavier. Refusal to answer was mostly seen in older ones, who even angrily questioned, “How can you ask such a boring question?” Most of the children in the country have a strong sense of guilt towards their parents and are torn when answering the question, especially men, and the logic behind it is, “There is only one mom, and the wife can marry again.”
Tong Meimei described this childish mentality of children being unable to separate from their parents as originating from childhood. Initially, the child sits as a fetus in the mother’s womb, completely contained by the mother. The child’s body is separated from the mother’s body at birth, but at the age of 0 to 3 years old, the child does not yet have a sense of self psychologically and needs to gradually detach from the mother’s body, which is typical of a baby named Bebe who only says “this is Bebe’s stuff,” without a self-subject in his words. “This is my stuff”, and began to disobey parents, so it is also known as the first rebellious period. The damage to the child often starts from this period, parents in the name of love, requiring children to go against their interests to memorize ancient poems, learn qin, chess, calligraphy and painting, etc., not allowing children to do this and that, interfering with their right to play, repeatedly invading their time and space, resulting in the child’s creativity being stifled at the age of 3; when they are a little older, parents do not need children to do housework, and do not allow them to play, as long as they learn well. As a result, the child’s psyche is stuck in the early years, unable to separate from their parents, unable to be themselves, unable to engage in role identification, resulting in boys not becoming men and girls not becoming women.
The consequences of not being mentally “weaned” are serious
In terms of married life, these children grow up to be “child couples” with their spouses, meaning that marriage is like children playing
These children grow up to be “child couples” with their spouses, meaning that marriage is like children playing “house”. For example, when a couple argues, one of them is quick to use “not cooking for you” as a means of attack, or even to show the parents of the colorful spouse. The psychological maturity of the couple know how to put aside the problem, the cooking to cook, will not be because of disagreement and attack each other. Women who are not mentally “weaned” are prone to in-law relationship problems. She wants her mother-in-law to treat her like a mother, but after all, she is not her own mother, nor is she an aunt or an uncle, so her daughter-in-law will have an opinion if she does not do well, not to mention that she and her mother-in-law love the same man together. If the daughter-in-law is unable to put herself in each other’s shoes and force herself into the relationship that naturally exists between her mother-in-law and her husband, it is inevitable that the relationship will be strained. Similarly, men who are not psychologically “weaned” are not able to handle the power struggle between their mothers and wives.
At work, they generally do not adapt to social work after graduating from college; they refuse to work when they have a problem with their boss, and their childishness makes them unable to distinguish between interpersonal boundaries and confuse their responsibilities; they cannot handle relationships with superiors and superiors, and their guilt makes them unable to communicate with their superiors when they have ideas; they do not refuse requests from others, and they are either passive or somatized when they are angry. They are always very grumpy, always anxious, and always perfectionists, and must work themselves to death, and end up doing a lot of things without getting any credit for them, with resentment building up inside.
Unlocking the knot, starting with women
Forrest Gump’s mother in “Forrest Gump” is a good mother who never asks her child to achieve anything, she is already happy as long as her son lives. The first thing that parents should do is to have a sincere conversation with their children, acknowledge their past mistakes in education, and completely change the stubbornness of Chinese parents who traditionally “don’t praise and don’t apologize. But Tong Meimei also admitted that it is difficult to make these changes, the hope of unlocking the crux lies in women. Currently, women in China are enthusiastically exploring the mind, for example, learning various psychological courses are mostly women, female students are often five to six times more than male students. Once something goes wrong in a marriage, women are more willing to seek marriage counseling, while men not only do not go, but are also reluctant to cooperate. The status of women in China is improving and their self-awareness is increasing. In a society where men still have to fight for their lives, women are strengthening their inner self, learning how to communicate benignly with their husbands and children, and improving the relationship between husband and wife, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and parent-children, which can continue to have a positive impact on at least 3 to 5 generations.
Dissidents: Chinese and Western cultures are different
Miss Li, a Guangzhou-based white-collar woman who chose to “save her father first and then die with her husband,” disagreed with Tong’s analysis. She believes that those who choose to save their husbands first “are either cheating men or lacking fatherly love in their childhood and do not know how to love their husbands when they grow up. The old bean gives me life, but I use my life to accompany my husband, accompanying until death is the greatest love.” In addition, she believes that the family ethics of the East and West are very different, Westerners do not have a strong sense of family, loyalty to marriage is not high, the most concerned about themselves, save your spouse does not mean very much love each other, not to mention the psychological maturity.