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[sjsmith]

chocolatechip,

You imply that your wife is Chinese.  I think you are going to find it very difficult to get her to support your plan.  I speak as a Chinese woman here who grew up in a very traditional household.  By necessity I will be speaking in generalities and what I say may not necessarily apply in your case and to your spouse and in-laws but this is all from my own personal experience.

Her parents (Chinese academics) probably supported you at first because traditionally in China academics are respected as the most direct inheritors of the old scholar-gentry system.  Also I think they tended to earn more money (well not now with the big boom but in the past).  However as soon as they find out that academics in America does not equal good stable well-paying job you can count on them to suddenly change their minds.  My parents used to be proud of my PhD.  Now that they discovered the truth about academic jobs they consider my PhD to be a curse and a burden.

You probably already know that many Chinese women have much more traditional views of gender roles.  You as the husband are expected to be the breadwinner.  The fact that you are not is not only disconcerting to your wife and her parents but I don't want to seem rude but from a Chinese POV, it is embarassing and involves a loss of face.  When I was unemployed my parents ordered my brothers not to say anything to anyone outside the family but to pass off some story about a vacation.  And I am female (less pressure than if I was male).  Chinese really really really care what the neighbours think.  When I was young my parents tried to warn me against Western males saying that they are "irresponsible" and are not likely to be as good providers as a Chinese male and just want to "play".  It's possible this stereotype is acting against you in her parent's opinion.  "Oh he's just another typical irresponsible Western male."

It might be difficult to get your wife and her parents to accept that you will be unhappy outside of academia, you want to follow your dreams etc.  You have a child now as well as a wife to support (I know she's supporting you but from the traditional POV you should be supporting her).  At this point you are supposed to suck it up and do whatever it takes to support them to be a "proper" husband and father.  The Chinese have a concept called "mang foo" or "bitter life".  It's accepting that your life was meant to be bitter and to suck it up with the satisfaction of seeing your kids prosper and be successful i.e. you are supposed to sacrifice yourself for your kids and family.  This is why you see so many Chinese immigrants do backbreaking manual work for very long hours and low pay for years.  They accept their life is "mang foo" and pin all their hopes on their kids.  Self-sacrifice for your kids is a biggie.  It's also why you see many old Chinese pray that they hope heaven will take them and spare their children/grand children.  Sacrificing yourself for your kids is a big part of Chinese culture.  Considering that this can even involve doing dangerous and backbreaking work many Chinese will find it difficult to accept "boredom" as an excuse.   Or as my Dad said after many years of this backbreaking manual work I was talking about "The most important thing with your career is to not dream.  Don't get lost in delusions.  Earn a good paycheck, get married, raise your kids well and be satisfied with that.". 

[sjsmith]

I forgot to add:

The reason why I wrote the above is in your attempts to make your wife and her parents accept your plan you will be dealing with big cultural differences about what is expected for a husband and new father.  "Following your dreams" is not a big thing in Chinese culture, if it involves neglecting what Chinese consider your duties and responsibilities as a man. 

[larryc]

 She is getting really angry about this, with frequent catty comments like "What are you writing?  Do they pay you for that?" and "why do you waste your time teaching instead of talking to so-and-so at GigantoTech?",  and big-old-nasty "you're a selfish failure in denial!!!" fights once or twice a week.

....

It's really quite a pain.  Any suggestions or sympathy?

This is really ugly. How did you guys get to the point where it is OK to speak to one another that way? I fear there is more wrong with your marriage than a frustrating job search, and that it needs more than a job for you to fix it.

No advice, but much sympathy. Good luck.

[pasdemaison]

She is getting really angry about this, with frequent catty comments like "What are you writing?  Do they pay you for that?" and "why do you waste your time teaching instead of talking to so-and-so at GigantoTech?",  and big-old-nasty "you're a selfish failure in denial!!!" fights once or twice a week.

This is really ugly. How did you guys get to the point where it is OK to speak to one another that way? I fear there is more wrong with your marriage than a frustrating job search, and that it needs more than a job for you to fix it.

I agree that this is a distressing way to speak to your spouse, but my experience was that a certain amount of this, which is similar to what I heard from my husband, reflected his anger at what he saw as my willingness to be a doormat by working on papers for which I wasn't compensated, not pursuing opportunities that seemed far more likely to him to result in a job, etc.  It is how people from the business world view academic job-hunting, and honestly, given the odds, they have a point; a lot of people are working for free to pursue opportunities that don't exist.  I'm not in a humanities field and knew my odds were better than most, but it's still pretty grim.  Some of this was because he was angry on my behalf, and taking it personally.  Now that I'm settled in a good position, many members of my family (all accountants who have their pick of jobs) have said that it was difficult for them not to say the exact same things my husband was saying over the three years I was on the market, but they managed it because they weren't as personally invested.  All of them are thrilled that things worked out in the end.

That said, I never got "you're a selfish failure in denial!" (although I did get: "you're in denial"), and that is a big red flag.

[contemporary_]

 She is getting really angry about this, with frequent catty comments like "What are you writing?  Do they pay you for that?" and "why do you waste your time teaching instead of talking to so-and-so at GigantoTech?",  and big-old-nasty "you're a selfish failure in denial!!!" fights once or twice a week.

....

It's really quite a pain.  Any suggestions or sympathy?

This is really ugly. How did you guys get to the point where it is OK to speak to one another that way? I fear there is more wrong with your marriage than a frustrating job search, and that it needs more than a job for you to fix it.

No advice, but much sympathy. Good luck.

Yes, this is approaching verbal abuse.  Shaming cultures do not see such behavior as a problematic form of social control, but the psychological toll is substantial.

With a new baby, it is important that you and your wife review what your nuclear family's shared values are, otherwise you are going to find yourself trying to change each other.  Just as you cannot "make a spouse believe" your professional goals are worthwhile through argumentation(beliefs have a tangential relationship to reason, if any at all), your spouse will not  change you for "the better" through shaming.

If your wife was raised with a fairly diverse social structure, you might be able to easily introduce browbeating, hen-pecking, and shaming as forms of bullying that undesirable in your home.  Know whether or not these are social norms you are comfortable reproducing in your child.

[vortex]

Yours and my situation are not entirely the same.  I have always been the breadwinner (no two body problem) and have only just gotten my PhD, but my wife was very insistent that I not take a postdoc or adjunct.  She also felt that I should forget about finding an academic job and go into industry.  I did not succeed in my job search last fall as an ABD and so took an industry job.  I am very unhappy and my wife knows it.  After two months of my coming home depressed and complaining, my wife is much more positive about academia.  Unfortunately, I have another 10 months before I can quit, but now I'm trying to make the best of it, and I'm happy that she has come around.  My wife was not convinced that I would be unhappy in industry until the reality was upon her.  Perhaps it's the same with yours.

[sjsmith]

 She is getting really angry about this, with frequent catty comments like "What are you writing?  Do they pay you for that?" and "why do you waste your time teaching instead of talking to so-and-so at GigantoTech?",  and big-old-nasty "you're a selfish failure in denial!!!" fights once or twice a week.

....

It's really quite a pain.  Any suggestions or sympathy?

This is really ugly. How did you guys get to the point where it is OK to speak to one another that way? I fear there is more wrong with your marriage than a frustrating job search, and that it needs more than a job for you to fix it.

No advice, but much sympathy. Good luck.

Yes, this is approaching verbal abuse.  Shaming cultures do not see such behavior as a problematic form of social control, but the psychological toll is substantial.

With a new baby, it is important that you and your wife review what your nuclear family's shared values are, otherwise you are going to find yourself trying to change each other.  Just as you cannot "make a spouse believe" your professional goals are worthwhile through argumentation(beliefs have a tangential relationship to reason, if any at all), your spouse will not  change you for "the better" through shaming.

If your wife was raised with a fairly diverse social structure, you might be able to easily introduce browbeating, hen-pecking, and shaming as forms of bullying that undesirable in your home.  Know whether or not these are social norms you are comfortable reproducing in your child.

From a Chinese POV I do not see the OP's wife's comments as all that unusual or cruel.  From a Western POV it might be.  Consider the ultra-popular Taiwanese TV drama "Meteor Garden" (which is based on a Japanese manga).  The heroine's mother berates her husband, stopping him from getting more food:

Mum: "Stop eating!  This is your fourth bowl.  Save it for your daughter."
Dad: "You're ticking me off."
M: "Of course.  You've almost finished the food.  It's all your fault.  20 years of hard work without a promotion.  You're so slow!"
D: "Slow?  I was quick at fathering Shancai!"
M: "Look at our neighbour.  Wang was promoted to assistant manager!...To think you're still a junior officer. "

And so on throughout the show.  This is supposed to be comedic by the way as shown by the over the top way they go about it.  Well, it's a stereotype...Personally I thought the constant haranging of the wife of her useless husband was hilarious.     

So to the OP, look on the bright side of things.  At least your wife isn't refusing to let you get seconds at dinner because you are "useless" like the couple in Meteor Garden :) 

The more serious side of this is you may find it difficult to convince your wife that what she is doing is wrong. 

[zuzu_]

Is that baby still getting up in the middle of the night? If so, YOU bring it to her, have her nurse on the outward-facing side of the bed first, then the inward-facing side so that she can go back to sleep while the baby is nursine. Then YOU bring the baby back to the crib or wherever.

 

This is brilliant advice. Move the down comforter and give it a shot. This strategy changed my life. And more babies suffocate when parents fall asleep in chairs/sofas than they do in beds.


Otherwise, you seem to be doing everything right.

[drothar]

Thanks for all the replies.

First, I'd like to admit that the original post was composed in the heat of frustration, and may have exaggerated things a bit.  The ugly fights happen much less frequently than once per week,  and "you're a selfish failure in denial" has never been said verbatim.   Most of the conflict appears in frequent  criticism and nagging,  pretty well described by sjsmith, that peaks around times when, well,  it is late at night and she has to do write-ups for work and the baby is hungry.

She responded pretty well to my suggested back-up plan. Part of the tension was that in the past year, I have focused on writing  as many papers as possible and this has taken me back to my dissertation area and my Old Gang of coauthors. My wife strongly believes that part of my difficulty getting a TT job is that my dissertation area was not "hot" (I agree, to a point),  and seeing me work on a variant of that area with an old co-author frustrates her.  So, she liked the backup/redirection plan that I sketched.  It didn't exactly end the nagging and criticism, however.  Probably because it didn't bring in money immediately.

The thing that really gets me is how she won't move unless I get a job at   a big-name R1 in a city with a lot of opportunities for her.  Last year a regional campus of a state university close by had an opening in my area. I considered applying,  but she lobbied hard against it "it's beneath you, why don't you stick with the plan, write a lot of papers, and then go to a university you will be happy with, that way we won't have to move so often".   I fell for it hook line and sinker. And now the plan is not good enough for her (admittedly, a lot has changed in our lives since then). I brought this up and her objection to Regional State U is now that it is far from where she works, and we would have to move to a new house in the middle and we would both have one hour each way commutes.  And I wouldn't make as much money there as I would as an engineer at GigantoTech. Admittedly this would not be perfect,  but it sure beats the present situation!

sjsmith's comments are illuminating - the wife definitely makes comments about how she cannot understand how my family tolerates my behavior, how my family disappoints her by not setting me straight, how she cannot understand how Americans would do this, how Americans are too spoiled to know how important money is, etc. 

 

The constant nagging is really get under my skin, and I cannot bear the thought of her treating our daughter like this in the future. The irony is of course that my mother-in-law treats my wife in this way, and my wife hates it and reacted by moving far away.

I will try to have a long talk to her about these things, but try to keep the clash of cultures stuff to a minimum. The last thing I need is for her to stand by nagging as a defense of Chinese culture...

[contemporary_]

sjsmith's comments are illuminating - the wife definitely makes comments about how she cannot understand how my family tolerates my behavior, how my family disappoints her by not setting me straight, how she cannot understand how Americans would do this, how Americans are too spoiled to know how important money is, etc. 
...
I will try to have a long talk to her about these things, but try to keep the clash of cultures stuff to a minimum. The last thing I need is for her to stand by nagging as a defense of Chinese culture...

I think you need to look closely at the fact that you are in a relationship where your partner feels comfortable insulting you, your family and your nation.  Your wife feels superior to you, and that is not a marriage of equal partners.

There is a difference between "critical" cultural norms and offensive behavior.  That you don't find this degrading is a big red flag.  I think it would be in your best interest to talk about these issues in the presence of a couples counselor who specializes in cross cultural methods and/or diversity issues.

[friendlyguy]

Thanks for all the replies.

Most of the conflict appears in frequent  criticism and nagging,  pretty well described by sjsmith, that peaks around times when, well,  it is late at night and she has to do write-ups for work and the baby is hungry.

The thing that really gets me is how she won't move unless I get a job at   a big-name R1 in a city with a lot of opportunities for her.  Last year a regional campus of a state university close by had an opening in my area. I considered applying,  but she lobbied hard against it "it's beneath you, why don't you stick with the plan, write a lot of papers, and then go to a university you will be happy with, that way we won't have to move so often".   I fell for it hook line and sinker. And now the plan is not good enough for her (admittedly, a lot has changed in our lives since then).
The constant nagging is really get under my skin, and I cannot bear the thought of her treating our daughter like this in the future.

Wow.  There are lots things going on here.

1) Being a new parent is probably one of the most stressful experiences there is.  Sometimes, it can be overwhelming, particularly for mom if she's having broken nights with breastfeeding, and holding down a full-time job as well.  When you're overwhelmed, everything is a problem.  Try what you can to help mom under these circumstances - take the baby out for an hour or two so that mom can have a nap.  Cook dinner for everyone, etc.

2) From a relationship perspective, I would be deeply concerned about your wife's lack of respect for your views.  It might be useful, at a time when you are both not worn out, to share your views on how she's handling the situation, and how this is impacting your relationship. 

3) Her view on moving (only a big-city R1 institution with lots of opportunities would be acceptable) is sorely unrealistic.  Tell her so.  You've got to reach some middle ground where you are both reasonably happy.  You're going to have to do this again and again in raising your child, so you've got to find a way of communicating effectively.

I wish you the best. 

[drothar]

I appreciate the replies and concern, but this has certainly far outlived its usefulness, and it might be bad to leave so much personal dirt on the internet (to say the least)

is there a way to destroy this thread and all posts by this identity ?

[contemporary_]

is there a way to destroy this thread and all posts by this identity ?

Use the "Report to Moderator" button on the lower right corner of your original post.  Perhaps they will honor your request.

Best of luck in all matters.

[larryc]

Actually, you cannot report your own thread or posts. But I can, and did for you. Good luck with you job search and your life.