Is it a happy mother's day?

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Is it a happy mother’s day?
Working parents in one survey spend just a half-hour a day nurturing their own kids. It's time to wake up
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
I know you think it’s you. But it’s not.
The award for Worst Mother of the Year goes to…me.
I turn my laptop on the minute I get home. I pretend to listen to my daughter’s stories as I frantically volley replies on BlackBerry. On weekends, I relish the chance to sleep in and let the maids deal with bath and breakfast and the most dreaded chore—brushing little teeth, especially those hard-to-reach, squirm-inducing back ones.
Two days before the world celebrates the joy and wonders of motherhood and thanks us who have dutifully filled and then emptied our wombs, I hang my head in shame and hardly think I deserve any special attention. Really, as a mother, I am a failure.
Well, sometimes.
Because that’s just the way parenthood is. Unlike our daily jobs, there are no benchmarks to success. Just when you think happy kids are the goal, a child psychologist or teacher will instruct you to let sadness occasionally wash over them, “so they can learn to deal with it on their own,” as one educator recently told me.
Nobody ever chastises working parents. We pat each other on the back, then say: “She’ll be fine. You’re doing the best you can.” Experts advise parents not to give into guilt.
I disagree. It’s time.
This week, The Times of India reported the results of a survey that find working parents spend only 30 minutes “nurturing their own children”. Not surprisingly, more than 85% of the 3,000 working couples in the study gave themselves a negative rating as bad parents. “Parents are working not only out of economic compulsion but also to cash in on their technical and professional qualification,” the study said. “Parents that work long or irregular hours are not available for children after school, and especially to help with the homework, ...and not able to do things together at weekends or eat together.”
Even on Sundays, when companies are allegedly off, working couples report being consumed with the endless tasks involved in running a household: paying bills, cleaning, going shopping.
The study illustrates the net effect of several societal shifts in the middle class. More and more couples are both working. Fewer families have the grandparents around. The demands at work are enormous: first, to sustain the growth in the economy and now to ensure all is not lost in case of a slowdown. Sadly, childcare has really not caught up; due to the sorry state of education in rural and poor India, most people’s maids have not even the nurturing instinct of one Mary Poppins bone. Creches are a fast booming business, but concerns over hygiene, safety and space persist. Parents who spend Rs5,000 on a meal quibble about spending half that to keep a good maid around.
In 10 years, will the neglect show? Is this study foreshadowing a future generation of kids who are needy, lack confidence, resent our success at their expense? Possibly.
Every now and then, when my mothering sinks to the all-time low I describe here, when my husband and I are both on deadlines and our daughter seems to crave even just a glance from us, something more powerful than the desire to achieve and excel washes over me: Mommy Guilt.
It is a most powerful and necessary warning. It inspires me to leave the laptop behind (or at least the cord so the battery dies in an hour). It forces me, no matter how pressed for time, to incorporate my daughter into my daily activities, if only to spend a few more minutes with her; we bathe, we brush, we banter. We reconnect.
This week’s findings, released by trade chamber Assocham’s Social Development Foundation, must inspire collective guilt, triggering changes at home and work. If reducing hours is not an option, children must be more effectively integrated into our lives, shopping to dining out. As parents have moved towards managing without their own parents around, so too might they learn to manage sometimes without another appendage: maids.
The rearing and nurturing of children in India is in crisis. Besides parents taking responsibility, workplaces will need to react quickly with flexible scheduling, not just to watch children but to take care of chores such as doctor appointments and car servicing. The risk of not reacting is to lose a diverse, necessary part of the workforce; according to Assocham, just 21% of mothers with young families want to work full-time, with an overwhelming majority preferring part-time work alongside raising their children.
Even as us working parents beat ourselves up, there’s some irony in what most motivates us: our children. To provide for them, to make the world a better place for them. Working mothers like me, with girls, try hard to set an example of the type of women they can be.
But in the end, our long hours and business plans really mean nothing without ensuring growth and vitality— of our most precious assets of all.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

words to live and love by

http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/02/14225946/Words-to-live-and-love-by.html

Dear husbands,
If you came here looking for a repeat of last year’s Valentine’s Day letter that gushed over the liberated man’s role in helping women succeed, Wider Angle is sorry to disappoint. But the results of a recent Hindustan Times survey of 500 middle-class men between the ages of 20 and 45 from six large cities have not left us feeling quite so loving — or even loved. Around 60% of those surveyed say they prefer stay-at-home wives. Only 24% of respondents said that their ideal woman should be “independent, yet a good homemaker”.
No, no, you say, that’s not me. And as proof, you might count yourself among the Indians who spent a record Rs3,000 crore on gifts yesterday. Perhaps in a moment of desperation, you even typed the phrase “what women want” into a search engine.
Here’s a thought — it’s not luxury watches or chocolates, not a fancy dinner, or even countless roses. In fact, maybe you should have been doing the letter-writing this year… Something like:
Dear wives,
Well, you know we’ve never been quite as good with emotions as you but, every now and then, we suppose we should at least try.
Valentine’s Day is filled with this four-letter word: love. And we certainly do love you. But we also wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that we cherish you, appreciate you, respect and honour you.
Whether you work, or stay home, or manage some super combo of both, we are amazed at how you manage to squeeze so many hours, chores and meetings into one day. That really puts us to shame.
There’s a lot more that makes us ashamed. That same Hindustan Times survey found that four out of five of us have made lewd comments to women. (The Hindustan Times is published by HT Media Ltd, also the publisher of Mint.) Nearly half of us surveyed felt women at a pub are “asking for trouble”.
We recognize that we have played a role in perpetuating the double standard that is making India’s streets unsafe for women. Troubling, dangerous cases of sexual harassment are euphemistically called “eve-teasing”. Somehow, we get away with many more “passes” than we should.
We are sorry. We are sorry for the results of these actions making life more difficult for you, whether it’s at a nightclub, or on your commute to work. Even as we judge and mistreat members of the opposite sex, we realize they are someone else’s wives, mothers and sisters.
Not as an excuse, but by way of explanation, many of us grew up in households where we were the centre of attention. Our mothers waited till our fathers ate, then us, before imbibing the remaining morsels. They made sure our needs were put before theirs, and so we grew up with this tendency to dismiss what women do, say, want.
Our mothers made sure our needs were put before theirs. So we grew up with this tendency to dismiss women
Despite such an upbringing, you women somehow manage to look the other way and take us in. In many cases, you have softened us, wakened us, bettered us. For that, we — and society — should be grateful.
In recognition, we are trying very hard to change. Admittedly, we’re not there as much as we should be, as involved in the rhythms of the household, from the mundane tasks such as remembering to order another gas cylinder to the more important child rearing. We understand that our lapses to you represent not mere forgetfulness, but a return to that regressive behaviour that doesn’t have a place in the new India we all are working so hard to create.
Sometimes, we wonder if you have given up on us. We ask you to hang on and hang in. Valentine’s Day seems such a frivolous continuation of typical gender roles: woman longs, man provides. The reality is that you Indian women have played a role of providing and sacrificing for centuries, modifying self as required by shifting mores and changing times.
We concede it is we men who have not been able to keep pace.
“India is not that advanced when it comes to the way many men treat women. Men here are not used to listening to women. That’s beginning to change, but it’s going to take a lot of time,” Barkha Singh, chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, which is under the social welfare ministry, was quoted as saying in a recent story by Cox News Service on the sorry treatment of women in India.
So the flowers, the chocolates, the gifts are mere things, we recognize. Actions are really what matter, you have shown us.
We are trying to change. But because we recognize some of our errors are deep-seated and institutional, perhaps it would be more meaningful if we pledged today to raise our sons and daughters as truly equal beings.
Blurred, liberalized gender roles in the next generation of Indians? Now that would be a real gift.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com