My two-year-old son clutches my legs and begs me: Mumma, please don’t go to the office. I guess this is a not-so-unusual scene in the houses of working mothers across the world. On a recent Saturday when after taking a bath I put on a T-shirt and pyjamas, my toddler happily said: no office today. With more and more women stepping out of their homes not only to earn a living but to earn the dignity as a person that has eluded them for many generations, such scenes are not a rarity.
Every morning, moments before it is time for me to leave for work, my son hovers around me and comes up with different requests – please take me in your arms, please draw a bus for me, please sing a song, and so on. He hangs around my husband as well, pleading with him not to go to the office. When all this drama is over and both of us are inside the car, away from the pleading eyes of our son, both of us joke. If only Vicky was old enough to understand things, we would have told him: how shall we finance your future if both of us don’t work?
However, deep down I feel guilty, very guilty. Often I calculate the number of hours I spend each day with my son, and the number of hours spent by my mother-in-law or mother with my son. Nonetheless, when I did the weekly calculations today I was more satisfied. Although on a daily basis I spend less time with my child, in weekly terms my grades are better. At the same time, I should not forget the night-time hours spent with my sunny, when my husband and I soothe him if he starts crying, or when either of us take him to the washroom.
Coming back to the guilt I feel for a few seconds every morning, I remember some criticism that Indra Nooyi was subjected to when she shared her anxiety over not having been able to participate in the Wednesday class coffee event at her daughter’s school every week. Ms. Nooyi said in the interview that her daughter would come home and mention the names of all the mothers who had come, and in the end say, “You were not there, mom.” There are many such stories shared on the Internet. Another example I came across was that of Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. One website quoted her as having once said that there was no such thing as work-life balance. ‘There’s work, and there’s life, and there’s no balance.’
Though these examples are of people who we don’t personally associate with, I have a colleague whose six-year-old daughter stays in the school day-care facility after school hours. Every time there is a long vacation in the school the little girl tells her mom, this time I won’t stay in the day-care. I’m old enough and I can stay alone at home, or else take me to your office. The mother has to then cajole the little one saying she is not old enough to stay alone at home, and mummy has many meetings in the office. In the end the girl gets resigned to her fate and agrees to go to the day-care when most of her friends are not there.
Last year, my 12-year-old nephew asked my sister, why do you go to office? None of my friends’ mothers work in an office. We were all taken aback by the question. It turned out that in the government quarters where they lived, she was the only woman who went to office.
I often envy the Facebook posts of my friends who solely manage their homes (which is no doubt a herculean task), but they do that without the added burden of office work which is now 24X7 courtesy the smartphones. For the working woman and mother there is hardly any respite from domestic responsibilities.
Today for the first time I asked myself the question – why is it important for me to work? Perhaps my answer lies in a follow-up question that promptly comes to my mind – why is it important for my husband to work?
minalmanisha@gmail.com
