I went to have lunch with a gang of girls yesterday. I have known the host for many years and have also been familiar with some of the faces at the party but for others, I was meeting for the first time. So I went about making some polite conversation with a few of them and happened to be standing in a circle with two women at a given point in time.
What do you do, I asked. She told me she was a teacher but quit after having 2 children. Wow ! I gushed. A teacher, that is truly fabulous job and I think one teacher in every family is literally a must to help guide us novices from this unknown maze of parenthood. To which the prompt retort was that it really doesn’t help in fact more often than not I get to hear that despite being a teacher, I am unable to manage my own kids !
As I was trying to digest that comment, I moved over to the next woman and asked her, what she did. The moment I popped the question, I saw her looking a tad sheepish and trying to avoid eye contact. And then she softly said “nothing, I am at home”. I smiled at her and replied, that’s not nothing - it’s a lot of work and it is commendable. That possibly gave her some confidence and she added that there are no holidays too. I told them a little anecdote about a young girl in my work place labelling her own mom as a home economist and family manager and how precisely these titles capture the essence of what a home maker does. The conversation then moved over to other bits and pieces.
As I lay back at home in the evening, these brief conversations, prodded my mind continually.
A woman being nagged about her inability to look after her own children despite being a teacher!
A woman feeling almost ashamed to say out loud that she is a stay at home mom/wife.
Is it the sole responsibility of women to bring up children? And whilst doing that, must one feel ashamed for not doing more ?
Why is there an underlying imposition of handling children or doing household chores on women alone. And who does the onus lie on in every household to change the dialogue. Why is the work of raising children or domestic work considered so banal that one feels ashamed to shout out loud for doing it without a simultaneous day job?
A marriage is between two individuals who mutually decide to build a home together. Then how do the roles segregate in such a unpremeditated manner. Most of the time, there possibly isn’t even a talk that ensues before the tasks get intuitively divided.
Similarly, to the best of my recollection it takes 2 to make a child, sperm and egg. Then, how does this responsibility always and automatically land on the shoulders of women alone. Not only does the responsibility land on their shoulders, if they’re not raised well or they are badly behaved, that blame is also entirely owned by the mother. How are men so conveniently painted out of the picture?
I think it is a collective responsibility on the entire household. Be it the wife or the husband or even the parents. The women need to speak up more about their contribution to the household and the enormous value they add to the entire scheme of things.
This does fortify the befitting corollary of the “Tiara Syndrome” mostly associated with women.It is the tendency in women to focus solely on job performance, believing this is sufficient for recognition and promotion. Women are just not used to blowing their own trumpet. They expect to be observed, seen, praised and applauded without as much as a word of appreciation about themselves from their very own mouths.
Women - Remove the tiara - state the “not so obvious” that you think is obvious to others. It is not !
And the men need to appreciate the value added by women at home and also shoulder an equal responsibility of bringing up the future generation and sharing the load of mundane domestic tasks. You are actually moulding your children to go out into the world and fend for themselves, you are trying to guide them to own values that will make them good human beings. It is a massive commitment. The future generation needs to see that equality and respect are the cornerstones of humanity.
These are the factors that will unequivocally mould the way they live, how they see the world, how they interact with the world and what they see as the normal or preferable way of doing things.
The tendency of women to automatically take on household work (including raising children) and the tendency of men to instinctively not is the great void that needs to be so desperately filled in this society.
This change cannot come about by egging one gender alone. It is a task that needs to be taken on by men and women both. Till the time, women keep believing that the primary responsibility lies with them - things wont change.
Parenthood is a shared privilege given to 2 individuals and both need to play their part in it. There shouldn’t be any scope of shirking responsibility. It just shouldn’t even be an option. It is a life changing experience that changes lives of two people and not just one.
Also, women do not come certified for domestic work either. Then why are women expected to either leave their jobs, or accommodate their work life around home chores or even if they are not working - to dedicate their exclusive time to these mundanities.
This common and automated egress of men from domestic tasks and responsibility of bringing up children needs to be spoken about more. Alongside the innate nature of women to take it on themselves.
As far as parenthood is concerned, it needs to start right of the bat - at the hospital when the father sees the child being brought into this world for the first time. Let the father take care of the baby in the hospital while the mother is recuperating. How many of you have had your mothers / mothers in law help you out instead of your husbands at the hospital. That is the starting point. That is where the subconscious seed to parent and to figure things out needs to be sown. But instead, what we do is, we assume their inability because of their gender. Why? Haven’t your sons, brothers etc figured other things out in life ? Didn’t they start their first job not knowing how they would figure it out. You get better at everything that you need to do. As long as you have an intention. Intention is key.
Practice makes a man perfect. Expertise in parenting or house hold chores is like expertise in absolutely anything else. You get better as you go along. And when you give one individual early opportunities to gather competence, then that one individual quickly becomes the expert. Give an opportunity to the other gender to gain that experience and expertise.
Why are we excluding men from this universe of experience. It is a great investment that we are discouraging men to make in their lives. Be it parenting or basic survival skills to handle domestic work.
This under representation of men folk on the home front is so blatant and glaring, yet for most women it is acceptable to hear condescending comments and insinuations around their in-capabilities on the home front.
The society we live in, women are responsible for looking after children and the home and men/fathers are at best helpers. The fact that a man attempting his hand at household chores is still funny demonstrates how we still believe that domestic work is a sphere of female competence only.
As far as the women are concerned, they need to own the fact that this isn’t their primal responsibility. It is a shared commitment. Start thinking of it like that. Your thinking will reflect in your actions and attitude. Slowly and steadily, things will change. They have to, only if you want them to.
The world is changing and conversations in the form of paternal leaves have already started in various organisations. But I guess the conversations in the four walls of the home are yet to make the progress that we need to see. These are the conversations that will have a cascading impact on the world around us.
I think we can safely say that raising children and domestic work requires knack, patience and expertise.
So for women to feel like they are not doing anything even though they dont have a spare moment to breathe in a day is heart breaking. It is blasphemous to make women feel so. I truly think they are self employed in various capacities as primary care givers, family managers, teachers, financial controllers, and many more.
There needs to be immense respect for this profession. And yes, i consciously call it that. This job has more KPIs than any other job in the world. I hope for more women who handle their house and raise children to be able to proudly say that they are self-employed and actively engaged.