Very recently a write up on ‘Stay at home Mom’ in the open page column of The Hindu generated among the readers. The theme is the most familiar one. It is all about educated young girls taking of job in search of both income and independence and its spillover effects in raising family more particularly taking care of young children. This debate will remain open ended and no one can pass any adverse judgment on those who take up their career as seriously as they take care of home. So long as the young wife gets support, a real support from the life partner in the kitchen and also a little assistance from her in-laws, there will not be any difficulty to take care of children and family responsibilities. But invariably sharing of burden is only an illusion and the ground level reality is that she is sand witched between home and office and virtually her life becomes a sacrificial one.
This article rekindled the memories of my younger days. I was born to my parents seventeen years after their marriage. My elder brother was born some seven or eight years ahead of me and he died in the sixth months. My parents were ordinary rice merchants in my village performing the difficult task of transforming the paddy purchased from vendors into consumable rice. With the exception of transport and the role of the machine in the rice mill, in the whole process of transformation of paddy into rice, the rest of the labor was shouldered by my father and mother in equal measure and I as a small boy faithfully contributing my very marginal share as if it was a playful activity. Indeed I feel proud that I was lucky to have that kind of parents who physically labored for more than three decades, rendering a great deal of business ethics, without accumulating riches in life in economic sense. But the amount of good will and the name that they accumulated for their family was indeed the greatest treasure in my human capital and the education I had in both my home town Pondicherry and the neighboring Madras city .
When I recollect my childhood experience in tranquility , the amount of care and concern evinced by my parents in shaping me was some thing which everyone born on this planet would not have got. Illiterate and hard working parents made their son literate.
Many a time I feel that I should labor physically like my parents but I don’t have the training and the physical stamina to work like them . Even at the old age of Ninety my mother was helping me in putting some order among the academic debris I have accumulated over time. Whenever I find my academic component of the house is in disorder which is always a reality, I remember my mother and I feel that I should do some physical labor daily in arranging the books, dusting the files and so on. I doubt very much With all my academic greed and with all my insatiable thrust for reading , how far I will emerge as a scholar but one thing I am be sure enough I will be an intellectual worker, living and laboring with books and that is sufficient for me. For any child the love of parents is some thing very important and a working mother cannot render full justice .But the other day my grand daughter was asking her mother, “Mom, if you go and work I will tell my friends that my mother is a teacher” and then she went on listing her dreams in life “ I want to become Doctor, teacher……… and a Security guard”. Before I conclude can I say in a lighter vein, a well informed kid would say that she doesn’t mind her mother going for work. But kindly note, my M.Phil daughter resigned her job in a lucrative publishing house and remained at home for more than four years to deliver the baby and take care of the kid. Perhaps if the governmental authorities and the private sector can give a lengthy holiday with pay to take care of the baby in the formative years of life, the Empty Nest Syndrome will not do much damage. But in any case children need to suffer and forego all the happiness that most of us had in our young life precisely for the reason that many families need some supplementary income and Mom remaining at home, sweet home, being sweet to kids will be rather an exception than a rule.
This article rekindled the memories of my younger days. I was born to my parents seventeen years after their marriage. My elder brother was born some seven or eight years ahead of me and he died in the sixth months. My parents were ordinary rice merchants in my village performing the difficult task of transforming the paddy purchased from vendors into consumable rice. With the exception of transport and the role of the machine in the rice mill, in the whole process of transformation of paddy into rice, the rest of the labor was shouldered by my father and mother in equal measure and I as a small boy faithfully contributing my very marginal share as if it was a playful activity. Indeed I feel proud that I was lucky to have that kind of parents who physically labored for more than three decades, rendering a great deal of business ethics, without accumulating riches in life in economic sense. But the amount of good will and the name that they accumulated for their family was indeed the greatest treasure in my human capital and the education I had in both my home town Pondicherry and the neighboring Madras city .
When I recollect my childhood experience in tranquility , the amount of care and concern evinced by my parents in shaping me was some thing which everyone born on this planet would not have got. Illiterate and hard working parents made their son literate.
Many a time I feel that I should labor physically like my parents but I don’t have the training and the physical stamina to work like them . Even at the old age of Ninety my mother was helping me in putting some order among the academic debris I have accumulated over time. Whenever I find my academic component of the house is in disorder which is always a reality, I remember my mother and I feel that I should do some physical labor daily in arranging the books, dusting the files and so on. I doubt very much With all my academic greed and with all my insatiable thrust for reading , how far I will emerge as a scholar but one thing I am be sure enough I will be an intellectual worker, living and laboring with books and that is sufficient for me. For any child the love of parents is some thing very important and a working mother cannot render full justice .But the other day my grand daughter was asking her mother, “Mom, if you go and work I will tell my friends that my mother is a teacher” and then she went on listing her dreams in life “ I want to become Doctor, teacher……… and a Security guard”. Before I conclude can I say in a lighter vein, a well informed kid would say that she doesn’t mind her mother going for work. But kindly note, my M.Phil daughter resigned her job in a lucrative publishing house and remained at home for more than four years to deliver the baby and take care of the kid. Perhaps if the governmental authorities and the private sector can give a lengthy holiday with pay to take care of the baby in the formative years of life, the Empty Nest Syndrome will not do much damage. But in any case children need to suffer and forego all the happiness that most of us had in our young life precisely for the reason that many families need some supplementary income and Mom remaining at home, sweet home, being sweet to kids will be rather an exception than a rule.
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