There's some side effects of the custom as well. For example, in Japan and Korea (and possibly parts of China), the custom is for the woman to move in with the husband's family where she'll spend most of her time providing household services and attending her parents-in-law every wish. Her mother-in-law, having done the same thing is now ready to relinquish her role as the home caretaker and well...mother-in-law/daughter-in-law friction (at truly dysfunctional levels) is a common theme in conversation, movies, tv shows, books, etc.
In Korea, being cursed with a difficult mother-in-law is a leading cause of divorce.
It more or less guarantees to take women out of the workforce as they now have a house to run, take care of the kids and the in-laws. And unless you don't have kids or your husband's parents are dead or otherwise able to care for themselves, there's nothing you can do about it.
Not surprisingly Japan and South Korea have among the lowest female workforce participation among OECD countries.
It also means that incentive for higher education among women is mostly as a social marker for marriage, but then any education is thrown away once she gets married (and especially once she has a child).
This also puts enormous pressure on the husband to be the sole provider for himself, his wife, any kids, and his parents.
What about the daughter-in-law's parents? Well, they better have had a son at some point who finds a wife who will take care of them.
The list of social issues that come from this arrangement are long and madness inducing to study (or live with).
I get what you're saying.. but "thrown away", really? Education's only purpose is work? An educated majority within society is desirable regardless of unemployment rates, and an educated mother will tend to provide with more opportunity for her children and create a virtuous cycle of good base education. That of course ideally should be provided by just as much contact with an educated father as with a mother, and I agree with the rest of what you said.
No that's true. But I think it's important to recognize education as a tool for learning and improvement vs. education as a social status marker so you can ensure you marry at the right level.
I'm frequently disappointed when some of my friends, who are otherwise wildly educated and smart, with great careers, simply drop completely out of their field for no other reason than they finally met a man who can support her at the prestige level she's worked so hard to obtain.
> There's some side effects of the custom as well.
Is this truly a side effect of the idea itself, or is this peculiar to Asian culture?
I'm a man, but if we had to care for my in-laws, I wouldn't consider this a burden. If anything, the opposite is quite true... my in-laws have always helped my wife and I through rough spots when they could.
We could adopt the custom without all of the baggage you describe, if we were so inclined.
1) If you don't want to care for your in-laws, there's little social safety net for them to retire on. Society is structured around this form of retirement.
2) Many women are now choosing not to get married in order to avoid being their mother-in-law's personal servant.
One of my Korean friends who married a Canadian man told me that one of the greatest perks of having a Canadian husband was that she did not have a demanding mother-in-law. They are legendary in Korea. Whether or not all mother-in-laws are as evil as they are sometimes portrayed, in general it is safe to say that they are somewhat more demanding, and the cultural expectations of a daughter-in-law are greater than in the mainstream Canadian context. My friend loves that during family gatherings she is a guest in her mother-in-law’s house instead of a worker serving men who do nothing but socialize and drink. She loves that she is not responsible for cleaning her mother-in-law’s house and does not have to prepare the enormous amount of food necessary for ancestral memorial rituals (and then be excluded from the ceremony because she is a woman). For her, marriage to her husband is about her relationship with her husband and not duty toward her mother-in-law.
I agree that there's cultural aspects of this. But there are always side effects of some sort. So adopting a model like this might mean that some of the unintentional side effects might come along as well.
In Korea, being cursed with a difficult mother-in-law is a leading cause of divorce.
It more or less guarantees to take women out of the workforce as they now have a house to run, take care of the kids and the in-laws. And unless you don't have kids or your husband's parents are dead or otherwise able to care for themselves, there's nothing you can do about it.
Not surprisingly Japan and South Korea have among the lowest female workforce participation among OECD countries.
It also means that incentive for higher education among women is mostly as a social marker for marriage, but then any education is thrown away once she gets married (and especially once she has a child).
This also puts enormous pressure on the husband to be the sole provider for himself, his wife, any kids, and his parents.
What about the daughter-in-law's parents? Well, they better have had a son at some point who finds a wife who will take care of them.
The list of social issues that come from this arrangement are long and madness inducing to study (or live with).
(edit) I'd add, there's a culture-bound psychological syndrome that's related to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwabyeong