Some mums do more work at home, some work outside.
All mums carry an equally big bag of guilt.
Dads face similar feelings but are less likely to acknowledge them.
It is 2016. A good time to change the discourse on SAHM (stay at home mums) and Working Mums.
Recently, while watching the stellar performance by Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro in The Intern I was struck by one scene in particular. Robert De Niro, as the 70-year-old intern to the Internet startup CEO Jules, is filling in to take her daughter to a birthday party. As he sits down with the rest of the school mums, there is a sense of coldness about her being the big shot CEO and sending her intern to babysit. When they call her “tough” he replies, that he’d assumed they would be happy to see “one of your own shattering glass ceilings”.
Why 2016 is the Year of the Non-Stereotypical Mom
That conversation pretty much sums up the walled stereotypes we harbour about working mums and stay-at-home-mums.
But guess what! The world is changing – in openness, opportunities and options. Custom fit careers are more real than ever before and so is the conversation on shared parenting.
People work to fulfil diverse motivations – some work to improve the world; some with an understanding that there is nothing like a little bit of your own money. Some work to carve an identity, some to make a difference; some to stay engaged with the world around them, some to find their inspiration, to create, to shape up a better, different world – and some because they couldn’t be anywhere else.
Diverse motivations are being chased by diverse options.
2016 allows everyone to pick their version of work. Find the sweet mix of freedom, financial gains and family.
Of Women Who Run Homes and a Country
Conversations and actions permeate us. What we perceive, we enact.
A lot of men and women grew up in households where there are no women in the formal workforce. A lack of role models and peer systems is clearly an under mentioned area.
It is time to acknowledge that women’s careers are a real thing; we can coach our daughters and sons to tread their paths independently in the directions they want. It is time to talk of role models. It is time to openly extend support to women so that their careers are their priority. It is not always telling the women they need to match up to the men. Sometimes, that support is telling the men to do the dishes.
Domestic work is a roadmap of drudgery everywhere – but India takes a big chunk of the cake.
In a country that prepares hot meals 3 times a day, that loves its festivals and weddings, have big families and bigger celebrations, have unpredictable care giving support and commutes – we forget, that the majority of this weight is on the shoulders of women.
We forget that women run the homes and the country. We forget that all of this is ‘work’ too – which we need to acknowledge, accept and share.
It is time to up the gratitude bar on work-life. It is also time to thank all hardworking dads and mums. It is time to revisit work as an act of meaning and creativity. Interestingly, the fastest growing segment globally is modular, remote, on tap work opportunities.
I hope more mums and dads find work that makes sense to them and works for them, because you never know whom you are inspiring. Most of all, your children!
(Sairee Chahal is the founder, CEO of www.sheroes.in – an online career destination for women. Sairee is India’s foremost women at work evangelist and earlier co-founded Fleximoms. She is also the Convener, The SHEROES Summit and has been instrumental in bringing businesses and women professionals on a common platform.)
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