The conditions prevailing these days are such that most parents are too busy with their jobs to find time to attend to their children. This is because the cost of caring for children in terms of food, clothing, furniture, rents or hire purchase commitments takes a large slice of most salary cheques.
Many parents accept inadequate diets for themselves in order to afford the best possible nutrition within their means for their children. The desire of many parents to make the best possible use of educational opportunities for their children may mean that mothers feel it worthwhile to take outside work to defray the expenses involved. Thus, in a majority of cases, the decision to work comes of economic necessity.
Some mothers also seek employment outside the home to ward off boredom and loneliness, though the percentage of such mothers in our country is not very high. Again, a mother who has been trained for a profession or some other highly skilled occupation also often wants to continue or seek outside employment because of a liking for the job itself. Her decision is complicated by the fact that she may lose some of her skill if she gives up her work for some years.
Some working women, particularly, those who have very young children, do feel guilty about going to work but this may also coexist with a sense of satisfaction and achievement. These women take the line, and with no appearance of self justification, that the neglectful mother is not the one who works but the one who is too lazy or indifferent to take advantage of today’s opportunities to raise her family standards.
There is still a wide variation between households in the amount of shared activity between husband and wife but there is no doubt or say the old view that child care and house keeping are exclusively women’s work is slowly disappearing. Now the husband’s cooperation extends far beyond masculine aids of decorating and repairs. In some houses he has been firmly incorporated into the week day routine of washing and floor polishing as well as a baby sitter in when his wife is away on duty. However, ‘giving a hand’ is not the same as a real sharing of household tasks and the general assumption still seems to be that the housework, shopping, etc. is still the mother’s task, even when she goes out to work. Thus, women carry an undue share of domestic responsibility.
When both husband and wife go out to work, they have to leave their young children to the care of others. There are broadly two categories of care to the under fives of such couples— individual care and group care. The first group includes care by relations (the grandmother is indisputable the most popular mother substitute), friends and neighbours, paid residents and daily help, child mender. The second consists of day nurseries, residential nurseries, nursery schools, nursery classes, creches.
Neighbours and friends are more often used by mothers who work full time. Mostly there is a definite monetary arrangement also. But this type of care must naturally be somewhat suspect. One wonders whether a friend or neighbour may not be sometimes a euphemism for an unregistered child mender.
Nursery schools, though considered herein the category of group care, are not primarily organised for the working mother. They close for holidays and follows normal (if slightly shorter) school hours. The mother, if she chooses to work, being obliged to fit in her hours accordingly or make other arrangement for the remaining hours and weeks when the child is not at school. Rare and lucky is the mother whose working hours correspond to the school hours of her child, both in terms of time and the holidays, but even then she must make provision for emergency care, if her child falls ill.
The father’s hours of work rarely permit him to be a regular mender of the preschool child. Now, one may ask what are the effects on children’s physical and emotional development of the mother’s absence at work. The widely held impression is that the effect of deprivation of a mother’s care on the very young children are disastrous. Problem of behaviour is more frequent among nursery children than among home children. Except in cases of absolute necessity such as widowed, illness of the husband or desertion by the husband, mothers of children under three years of age should not, therefore, take full-time work. As someone has rightly observed that for a mother of children between 5 and 10 years old to have to park her children and go to work is a moderate pity, but for a mother of a child under 5 to have to leave baby is a tragedy that can have disastrous consequences.
Care of body include cultivation of good habits and no one can take place of mother. Napoleon once asked—”Who you are?” he replied—” I am what, my mother made me.”
Remember, you are making future of your family as well as of your country by proper care of your child/children.
