"Onerous home work "
“I am just a house wife” . These words you would have heard many times from women who do not have income earning activities. Such status is understood as unemployment status. When they utter these words they look as though they have an inner feeling that, they are not as powerful or as productive as the working women. Is it true? Let us analyse the truth behind it.
Generally mothers perform seven responsibilities for the welfare of their families. These tasks are performed by Indian mothers without active cooperation of the male members of the family since; it is an accepted norm in the Indian culture. Hence, they are over burdened with these services without any rest, or holidays or retirement. Nevertheless, they render them with love, devotion and total dedication for the sake of welfare and happiness of their family members.
We may split those responsibilities into, bearing and rearing of children , management of food preparation for the family all through the day, house hold work , health issues, elder’s and guest’s requirements and festivals preparations . All these duties performed throughout their productive years are performed with perfection or near perfection depending on the mother’s efficiency, their own health status, the cooperation of the family members and the assistance of service providers. But they are the CEO of all these home management tasks involving meticulous planning of time, resources and manpower and hence, are described as home makers. It is not easy to manage these seven responsibilities as they look. Take for example, the food management skill, which has to be executed all through their life time perfectly. The right quality, quantity, taste and serving food in the right time are to be taken care in the interest of the family member’s health. It is a lifelong duty of mothers without any holiday or retirement. How many mother’ service in this matter is recognised or appreciated is a big question because, mothers are generally taken for granted. Imagine the chaos in a family if a mother is bedridden for a week. Only then, the family will learn not to take mothers for granted and under estimate the magnitude of the food management task. Mothers can be called “super managers for this task alone.
Same is the task of health and elder’s management since various sub tasks come under it. There are additional duties too if, a mother opts to teach her children without tuitions, opts to drive her car without driver and undertake financial management also. What about festival managements and guests management? Each responsibility related to home management are to be executed with perfection .Single mothers have to compensate for the absence of father figure and have to be in charge of crises management too. Working mothers have to struggle a lot in balancing the professional and home front tasks since, one can not suffer at the expense of the other. They need extra ordinary time management skill.
All these responsibilities take a toll on women’s health due to various reasons. Early rising and late to bed resulting in inadequate sleep, late food or hurried food resulting in their digestive disorders and lack of resting time resulting in their extreme tiredness and low productivity. They are in the habit of trying home remedies first when they fall sick and report late to the doctors resulting in medical complications. Indian mothers generally are reluctant to involve men in household work and voluntarily bear all the responsibilities. Majority of mothers, do not even measure the amount of work they do for the welfare of the family. That is the reason the unemployed mothers say that, “we are just house wives” because their services are not measured in terms of money.
The position of mothers during the current pandemic situation is indescribable. In a situation when all the members of the family stay in for the whole day, the work burden for the mothers have doubled due to the constant need to full fill the demand of the family members regarding food all through the day and that when domestic assistants are stopped due to fear of spread of Corona virus. That means additional labor work for mothers. Division of work by family members does not prevail in many families. Hence the mothers are robbed of their one or two hours of leisure time or “I time enjoyed hitherto by them.
Hence, all the mothers working or non working are all “super CEOs” of home front. Most of the mothers consider the love, concern and care their children bestow on them is more valuable than awards given in the name of “women achievers” awards
Hence, let them not say again that they are” just a house wives” but say with self confidence and pride that, they are “home management executives.”
No comments:
Post a Comment