“What will you do after you finish your education?” I asked one of my friends, and she worriedly replied: “Before finishing my education, I might end up getting married. If I am lucky, my in-laws might allow me to finish graduating. After that, I’ll be a stay-at-home mom.”
A teacher at a women’s college I know leaves early in the morning, and comes back in the evening. From morning till evening, her kids are under the supervision of a housemaid, who is an young teenager. Though the kids’ mother speaks in proper Bangla, the children speak in the local dialect which they have learnt from their housemaid. At home, these kids imitate what they watch on TV and what they see their housemaid do. They get very little time to interact with their mother, and consequently fail to learn her ways.
Another mother works as a banker. Her mother stays at home and takes care of the grandchild when she is at work. In a way, this helps to instill comparatively better values and culture in the child’s mind, as she gets a close relative as a caregiver. But still, it relies on her grandmother’s stock of knowledge. That is how this child is going to grow up. This child will pick up her grandmother’s ways as she grows up.
But, not all mothers feel satisfied with this idea of leaving their children at home in someone else’s hands. They want to raise their children in their own ways, as the tradition goes. They are constantly worried: “What if my child picks up bad language? What if my child cannot behave properly? What if she starts thinking like our housemaid?”
This is not the only reason why women want to be stay-at-home parents. Other social individuals, especially their own husbands, parents, and in-laws often discourage the idea of working outside the household.
Husbands often claim that they marry someone in order to feel complete. When they come home from work, they don’t want to go to the kitchen and cook. They come back from work to see their counterparts taking care of everything, as a partner would do. Parents also discourage their daughters-in-law to get jobs.
They argue that they don’t need financial assistance from the wives. Women are meant to do chores. If they stay out, like men, they won’t be able to lead a happy life. It will be very difficult for them to raise kids and so on. In terms of persuasion, they repeatedly give examples of fictional families where children became drug addicts, bad students, etc.
This is not an issue for Bangladesh only. Globally, families often face this problem. In developed countries, where gender inequalities are less eminent, people make their own choices. If the woman is more qualified and able to earn enough to support the family, then the man takes responsibilities at home.
Household chores are mostly shared, because of a mutual understanding. Even if men are in superior professions, women are not forced to stay at home if they are willing to work. In terms of raising kids, they appoint nannies or babysitters at home, while they both try to work for their future. At a certain age, children are sent to daycare centres.
In Bangladesh, few offices and factories provide child daycare centres for working parents. But, these daycare centres are not available in the majority of the workplaces. As it is not very easy to find a reliable person in the family who can properly take care of the kids, many educated women have to stay at home and become full-time mothers. These educated women even choose to resign from their workplaces permanently in order to take proper care of their kids and families.
If we grow up believing that we only have responsibilities towards our own individual families, it will affect the country badly. Certainly, individuals should value family, but they should also value a community where they get playgrounds, public institutions, hospitals, and security.
When women get public benefits such as public education, but choose to stay at home serving just the family, they only pay back their own families’ investment. But, when women become public officials and serve the nation, they pay back the whole population’s investment.
In order to ensure women’s empowerment, we need to do more research on how we can ensure safety and security of the kids growing up at home. We must find ways to make sure that women don’t feel uncomfortable going to their workplaces. We must break out of these notions.