A few days ago, I called to congratulate an old college friend on becoming mother to a little boy. She was delighted exhausted nervous and grateful all at the same time. She said she feels blessed holding her son in her arms.
She was a very bright student with a charismatic personality who went on to hold high posts in the corporate world early on in her career. She heads the marketing division of a large insurance MNC now. When I had met her long back, she was upset with her mother in law because she was expecting her to start a family soon. My friend was of the opinion that marriage is not = babies. She said she doesn't find the idea exciting and doesn't want to go through the trouble. I was surprised but I kept quiet. There are a certain things you can't question people on. I just said you'll know only when you have a baby. I'd seen my nephews and niece by then and I knew how it transforms your life completely when you have a baby. And that too for good. You wouldn't find anything quite like it ever again.
Years later when I saw her message saying 'cleared all the three trimesters' to welcome my son Meer. I was pleasantly surprised. I wanted to meet her and congratulate her in person but since it wasn't easy, a phone call was all I could manage. She said she was unsure if she would ever be able to leave her son and go back to work. She said everyone has done it, I will also try. She sounded anxious. Till then I'd not realised how traumatic it is for a mother to even think of being away from her new born child. And to actually do it is another thing altogether even if you're leaving her behind with your mother or your in-laws. But after three months when I called her on a Sunday she announced she is going back to work on Thursday, ending the sentence with sigh. Next time when I called her, she had developed a rhythm and started enjoying the challenge of being a working mother and optimizing her schedule to fit in maximum time for her child. She now wrote a blog for all the new mothers how to cope with work pressure and how to prioritize when something as elemental as sleep becomes a prize.
That got me thinking if this new phase of separation right for the baby or the mother. The mother had toiled years, in fact more than a decade to be where she is in her professional life. It would be criminal to expect her to give up everything all of a sudden now that she has a child. From the child's perspective it is cruel to separate her from her mother. What should be done then?
Who has the right answer? Who can help both of them strike a balance?
I feel guilty because my mother gave up her job for me. I wish she had continued working and achieved what she dreamed of. But a mother is a mother after all. No one can be what she is to her child. Even if she entrusts her child with the grand parents, they can't replace her.
Sorry I've no answers.
In a post on akkarbakkar.com, a working mother writes to a stay at home mother justifying her stance. I read all the comments below to see how the general public is reacting to it. One of the working mother says I want to give a better life to my children than what my parents could afford. She sounds okay but if you think deeper, her parents succeeded in making her an independent career woman with whatever little they had, she doesn't need extra finances for the success of her children. I say why be guilty of continuing to be who you are even after having a child?
Anyway I have been trying to think from both the sides and I feel there's another underlying cause because of why we cannot blame the working mother.
Since we keep evolving, every new generation as a whole is smarter than the previous ones. Thanks to industrial revolution, a lot of work now a days is done by machines, so we have spare time to pursue different goals which people couldn't think of a hundred years ago. That slowly made us even more smart. With our minds becoming sharper and smarter, we stopped finding interest in menial repititive tasks which a stay at home mom has to do. Doing household work didn't satisfy our restless minds anymore and we started needing more stimulation to feel productive and engaged. With it came women's education and empowerment. They started expressing their individuality and demanded equality on all fronts.
That or something else somehow lead men to stop respecting women for their contributions as much as they did in the past. In my parents generation the relationship between a man and his wife was much more cordial. There was proper division of labor at home and both the sides respected each other since both specialized in their area of expertise which the other one couldn't do. Now there are no boundaries, women do what men do and vice versa. There is a lot confusion and the dynamics at work and at home are undergoing massive transformation. So who should sit at home to raise the kids?
That's the price of modernization that our children have to pay. With her parents not around, the child has to be really lucky to receive good values and become a stable and mature individual.
God has made the earth in a way that if we do well in one area, some other aspect of our life gets compromised which adversely affects the most vulnerable area. Like industrial revolution meant we had lot of conveniences so that we didn't have to toil to do our daily tasks and so our health deteriorated. Plus it caused pollution and is threatening the existence of many life forms. There are countless such phenomenon happening now a days.
But to me the key take out is that we bring our children into this world, they are our responsibility. How we choose to take care of that responsibility is completely our own choice. We can't say what is right or what is not for anyone else. Yes but if those kids who get neglected become a headache for the society then someone has to do something about it and that can be no one but both the parents who must actively contribute.
She was a very bright student with a charismatic personality who went on to hold high posts in the corporate world early on in her career. She heads the marketing division of a large insurance MNC now. When I had met her long back, she was upset with her mother in law because she was expecting her to start a family soon. My friend was of the opinion that marriage is not = babies. She said she doesn't find the idea exciting and doesn't want to go through the trouble. I was surprised but I kept quiet. There are a certain things you can't question people on. I just said you'll know only when you have a baby. I'd seen my nephews and niece by then and I knew how it transforms your life completely when you have a baby. And that too for good. You wouldn't find anything quite like it ever again.
Years later when I saw her message saying 'cleared all the three trimesters' to welcome my son Meer. I was pleasantly surprised. I wanted to meet her and congratulate her in person but since it wasn't easy, a phone call was all I could manage. She said she was unsure if she would ever be able to leave her son and go back to work. She said everyone has done it, I will also try. She sounded anxious. Till then I'd not realised how traumatic it is for a mother to even think of being away from her new born child. And to actually do it is another thing altogether even if you're leaving her behind with your mother or your in-laws. But after three months when I called her on a Sunday she announced she is going back to work on Thursday, ending the sentence with sigh. Next time when I called her, she had developed a rhythm and started enjoying the challenge of being a working mother and optimizing her schedule to fit in maximum time for her child. She now wrote a blog for all the new mothers how to cope with work pressure and how to prioritize when something as elemental as sleep becomes a prize.
That got me thinking if this new phase of separation right for the baby or the mother. The mother had toiled years, in fact more than a decade to be where she is in her professional life. It would be criminal to expect her to give up everything all of a sudden now that she has a child. From the child's perspective it is cruel to separate her from her mother. What should be done then?
Who has the right answer? Who can help both of them strike a balance?
I feel guilty because my mother gave up her job for me. I wish she had continued working and achieved what she dreamed of. But a mother is a mother after all. No one can be what she is to her child. Even if she entrusts her child with the grand parents, they can't replace her.
Sorry I've no answers.
In a post on akkarbakkar.com, a working mother writes to a stay at home mother justifying her stance. I read all the comments below to see how the general public is reacting to it. One of the working mother says I want to give a better life to my children than what my parents could afford. She sounds okay but if you think deeper, her parents succeeded in making her an independent career woman with whatever little they had, she doesn't need extra finances for the success of her children. I say why be guilty of continuing to be who you are even after having a child?
Anyway I have been trying to think from both the sides and I feel there's another underlying cause because of why we cannot blame the working mother.
Since we keep evolving, every new generation as a whole is smarter than the previous ones. Thanks to industrial revolution, a lot of work now a days is done by machines, so we have spare time to pursue different goals which people couldn't think of a hundred years ago. That slowly made us even more smart. With our minds becoming sharper and smarter, we stopped finding interest in menial repititive tasks which a stay at home mom has to do. Doing household work didn't satisfy our restless minds anymore and we started needing more stimulation to feel productive and engaged. With it came women's education and empowerment. They started expressing their individuality and demanded equality on all fronts.
That or something else somehow lead men to stop respecting women for their contributions as much as they did in the past. In my parents generation the relationship between a man and his wife was much more cordial. There was proper division of labor at home and both the sides respected each other since both specialized in their area of expertise which the other one couldn't do. Now there are no boundaries, women do what men do and vice versa. There is a lot confusion and the dynamics at work and at home are undergoing massive transformation. So who should sit at home to raise the kids?
That's the price of modernization that our children have to pay. With her parents not around, the child has to be really lucky to receive good values and become a stable and mature individual.
God has made the earth in a way that if we do well in one area, some other aspect of our life gets compromised which adversely affects the most vulnerable area. Like industrial revolution meant we had lot of conveniences so that we didn't have to toil to do our daily tasks and so our health deteriorated. Plus it caused pollution and is threatening the existence of many life forms. There are countless such phenomenon happening now a days.
But to me the key take out is that we bring our children into this world, they are our responsibility. How we choose to take care of that responsibility is completely our own choice. We can't say what is right or what is not for anyone else. Yes but if those kids who get neglected become a headache for the society then someone has to do something about it and that can be no one but both the parents who must actively contribute.
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