Story #8
- the one who should be seen
Sula
China
*This story is based on a recorded conversation. It has been lightly edited for clarity and flow, with direct quotes preserved to reflect the speaker’s voice.
My Story
Q 1 : Before becoming a mom, what dreams or goals did you have for life and your career?
I didn’t really have any specific goals or dreams back then. Coming from an ordinary working-class family, graduating from university was already seen as the best possible outcome within my family.
I was quite unaware of the greater tides of the era I lived in.
My parents taught me to work properly, follow orders, and be diligent — they believed that if you did all that, you could live a stable life.
So naturally, I followed the path — I reached the age for marriage and had a child, just like that.
There was a small twist along the way: I was originally going to have a child 2–3 years earlier. But because of a departmental restructuring, I was transferred to a new position right after getting married. At the same time, the state-owned enterprise I worked for was undergoing major structural adjustments. I was afraid that if I had a child then, my new position would be taken by someone else. So I postponed it.
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(In China, “state-owned enterprises” (SOEs) are large government-run companies that were especially dominant before the economic reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s.)
Q 2 : Use a few words to describe yourself before becoming a mom.
No big ambitions, just going with the flow.
Q 3 : Before becoming a mother, what was your impression of motherhood?
To be honest, I wasn’t very prepared.
My impression was still shaped by the previous generation — a fixed way of thinking, where women were expected to become mothers at least once in their lives.
Motherhood was considered a natural expression of womanhood.
A mother was supposed to give more, to take care of the child thoroughly.
Because I lacked preparation and understanding, later on I faced a lot of confusion and inner conflict.
Q 4 : After becoming a mother, how did your mindset, priorities, or daily life change?
After becoming a mom, my focus shifted entirely to my child.
Although I still worked a regular 9-to-5 job, my work remained mostly administrative, without much breakthrough. After work and on weekends, I devoted all my time to my child.
Maybe it’s because my parents were also from an ordinary family, and they too put all their energy into raising us — so I naturally followed the same path.
After becoming a mom, there was hardly any space left for myself.
Especially when the child was little, the amount of care they needed was intense, and this responsibility largely fell on me. In our marriage, the father was mainly responsible for earning money.
Only when my daughter reached the upper grades of elementary school did I start to have time to focus on my own development.
Q 5: After becoming a mother, was there anything you felt you had to give up? Or were there any unexpected joys or rewards?
After becoming a mother, I definitely had to give up a lot of my free time — even my career development.
To be honest, I never had very high ambitions for my career anyway.
So following the traditional notion of the man working outside and the woman tending to the family, I devoted myself entirely to raising my child. My social life also became much more limited.
But in the process of raising a child, I encountered many challenges and had to learn while dealing with them.
Looking back, I realize it was precisely because I became a mother that I got to face problems that people without children might never encounter. And having to handle those challenges — that was also a form of personal growth.
I think the journey of a mother and child growing up together is mutually transformative.
Especially as the child matures and gains self-awareness, the relationship becomes one of mutual learning and progress.
When my child was preparing for major transitions — from primary to middle school, middle to high school, and later applying to universities abroad — I also absorbed a great deal of information and took many courses.
I feel that if I hadn’t become a mother, I wouldn’t have had such a strong motivation to grow and learn — especially given my personality.
Now my daughter has gone abroad for university, and has experienced living, studying, and working independently. Today, we are two fully independent individuals — not only supporting each other but, in many ways, she now helps me solve problems or confusion in my own life. That has been one of the most beautiful surprises and rewards for me.
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(In China, each school transition — especially from primary to middle school, and middle to high school — is highly competitive and often involves entrance exams or interviews.)
Q 6: Did becoming a mother affect your financial independence? If so, how?
Yes — because my focus was on caring for my child, I resigned from my company job when she was in 4th grade and switched to flexible work. I put all my effort into supporting her education transitions.
Luckily, the income from my flexible work was enough to cover my expenses, thanks to the booming era of China’s economic development.
But if the same decision were made in today’s economic downturn, it would be a much riskier move.
Q 7: How does your parenting approach differ from how your parents raised you?
We, the generation born in the 1970s, take parenting more seriously than our parents did. We emphasize education and culture more.
Our parents focused more on survival. But now I wonder if our parents might have been right in some ways.
The only children we’ve raised often lack independence. Looking back, maybe we were too meticulous. I think even the entire education system might have gotten some fundamentals wrong.
In the end, we too were swept up by the tide of the times.
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(“70s” refers to those born in the 1970s in China, a generation that grew up during significant social and economic changes. Many of them raised children under the One-Child Policy, in place from 1980 to 2015.)
Q 8: Has becoming a mother changed how you interact with people around you?
After becoming a mother, I found that I could barely maintain friendships with classmates who didn’t have children. We just had no common ground in our conversations.
Even among moms, we got along well in the first few years, but as our children grew up, differences in family values became more apparent, and the shared resonance faded.
When my daughter went abroad for school, I felt a strong sense of loss.
It took a long time to adjust, to find a new anchor in my own life.
Q 9: If you could say one thing to other mothers, what would it be?
Being a mother is indeed exhausting — but it’s also a truly worthwhile life experience. Just treat it as that: one meaningful experience — not your whole life, not the only one.
So if you feel too much pressure during motherhood, you can set that role aside for a moment and return to being yourself. Don’t carry guilt or burden.
After all, your child will eventually grow into an independent adult and leave you. And we, too, must eventually return to society as independent individuals.
Q 10: Anything else you’d like to share?
Depending on the country or region, the experience of motherhood can feel very different.
What women need most in return for this special kind of devotion is genuine respect from society — the kind that comes from the heart.
In the environment I live in, most mothers are just ordinary people submerged in the crowd. Many of them don’t have the luxury of career choices.
Their greatest achievement may simply be raising a single child.
Your Voice Matters
What part of this story resonates with you?
Would you like to share your own voice—or someone else’s?
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Let’s keep building this archive of mother-identities together.
Submit Your Story
at the bottom of "story 1"
-Emily Shao
