Guilt is a constant companion to me since i became a mother. There is so much responsibility associated with being a mother.
I feel guilty if let my child watch ½ an hour of T.V. coz I need a bath. Feel guilty if she doesn’t eat her food and ends up eating chocos and bread-sticks with butter for lunch coz she’s unwell. Feel guilty about talking to a friend while my child plays with a much older child. They need constant supervision. It’s a constant tug-of-war. Somehow, I always feel there is something that I could have done better.
When there are other people in the house, this tug-of-war becomes much worse, but somehow, I end up feeling better. When my husband’s parents were here, I was always running around, trying to cater to everyone, including a very demanding child. My in-laws were both unwell so they would need something or the other all the time. I would be busy all the time, but somehow, since they were staying with us I felt a completeness/ smugness come over me. As if being this busy, justified my not being a working mom.
I’ve noticed this change come over me whenever I’m with my in-laws. If I go and stay with them in this old-fashioned, small-town mentality city, I feel more relaxed.
Don’t feel the need to justify my being a housewife there. While, in towns like Delhi/ Mumbai, a lot of women choose to work as soon as they can, even after having kid, leaving small children to stay with either grandparents, or maids or at a crèche. This is probably all good as long as the parents are sure that the child is in safe hands.
But to me, it seems like today’s world doesn’t realize the importance of at least, a mothers company, (if the father can’t make it), in the formative years of a child’s life. The child is learning to “LOOK” at the world when she’s born. She’s learning to walk, touch, taste, smell, feel and listen to the world around her. If she hears an illiterate maid speaking instead of an educated, cultured, well-read parent, then she might as well have been born to the maid.
If you’ve brought a child into the world, doesn’t she deserve to hear her parents speak, watch them behave in a certain way and act in a certain manner, rather than look, feel, talk, walk and listen from a maid’s perspective.
A child DESERVES a parent’s company, perspective and supervision when she’s learning about the world and how to act and react to all that surrounds her. The 1st 4 years of a human child are meant for cognitive development, which happens at a really fast pace. Developmentally, the child goes through the most amount of change in these 1st few years of his/ her existence. If we’ve taken the time to get pregnant and give birth, the least we can do as responsible parents is to ensure that she starts off her life on the right foot.
I'm not saying that all women choose to work as soon as their child learns to sit up, but for some of them, I feel that it could have been avoided just if they had a more supportive spouse or they could prioritise what they really want in life. Some truly precious and important time with their child or a high flying career. I'm sure a lot of them agonise over these dicisions and worry about the effects of leaving the child with alternative care rather than with either parent or a grandparent.
In recent times I've noticed that along with a mordern approach, people have forgotten about basic things like post delivery care for the mother (which incidentally used to extent to 4 months in my mother's time), and the presence of a parent (usually a mother) in the 1st few years of the child's life. Now the mothers want to get into smart office wear 5 days after delivery and start attending corporate meetings too. Yes, women are as educated and capable in the office as their husands and yes, their careers are important too, but if we're pitting one sex against the other here, where does it leave the child??
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