Word of the day

良妻賢母 - ryousaikenbo
Eng: A good wife and a wise mother

This word is the term for the Japanese ideal of a woman's place in society; supporting her husband in every possible way and devoted to the upbringing of her children.

Of course, America's view of a woman's place was generally quite similar just a few generations ago. I was really surprised today to learn, though, that a fellow student of mine in her early thirties went to a high-school that had an etiquette class for its female students that was intended to inculcate the proper habits of a ryousaikenbo in the next generation of mothers.

Edit:
I just have to add this. I adhere pretty strongly to the cultural relativist school of thought. It would be ridiculous for me to judge a culture for its values - we tend to forget that the things we excoriate other cultures for, we were doing ourselves just a generation or two ago. But I'm surrounded here by brilliant fellow students who are conducting fascinating research and arriving at startlingly insightful conclusions. Most of them are women: what a waste it is even on purely objective terms to tell them all that is their job to stay home, raise babies and cook.