Modern-Day Demands

Zinhle Sokhela:  PCB Director

I write this article on National Women’s Day and have been prompted by today’s After Eight Debate on SAfm to express some thoughts.    An older woman phoned in and made the point that women should not denigrate their role as “queen of the home”.   Being housewife and mother, often presented by gender activists as the reflection of male domination, is a noble occupation without which families are more likely to fall apart and children lose their moral and emotional compasses.   These views, though worthy of consideration, are out of touch with reality, unfortunately.   Previous generations of wives and mothers did not need to work.    Breadwinners were husbands and salaries and employment benefits were geared accordingly.    Families managed where the wife’s work was confined to the home.    Nowadays, for most people this would be impossible.   While the very rich may manage to do it, most couples cannot afford to raise a family on one salary.    They could manage it, I suppose – many single parents do – but the demands of modern life make it very unacceptable.   So, mothers go out to work, often getting home no earlier than their husbands, and not expending any less effort or stress in their jobs.   It is a set of circumstances in which children could easily be deprived of security, physical and emotional, and tacitly encouraged to do things when alone at home that their parents wouldn’t like them to do.   Some might think that it is ideal for children that they should arrive home from school to find their mothers waiting for them. 

I’m not sure if this is so, at least not in every case.   Perhaps the ideal is that mothers should earn so that the family is less deprived; perhaps the key is not whether mother is on the doorstep everyday, but whether father and mother, together with their children, embrace family values and ensure that all contribute equally to the welfare of the family.    This means that responsibilities must be shared.   Wives cannot be expected to perform all the domestic chores which husbands have decreed over centuries are not theirs to do.    Cleaning, cooking, bathing the children and changing nappies are not tasks that carry a women-only tag, except in the minds of males.    What kind of family is it where the tired wife after a day’s work must do all these things while the husband, claiming tiredness from his hard day at the office, accepts no responsibility for them?    In a well-ordered family, which has come to terms with modern life, the children, too, will share the load of chores.  

Therefore, the issue is not whether the mother is at home to look after the children in the afternoon, but how the family is able to organise itself so that modern-day demands are met without any negative effects.   Children should not be coming home to an empty house until they are old enough to take responsibility for their own discipline.  Plans can be made in the meantime.    The meeting of the family at the end of the working day need not be a time for recrimination and complaint.   It can be a time of joy when people who love each other come together in their common home where cleaning and cooking and washing all have to be done, and preferably, as shared activities.    One appreciates that during weekdays, family life cannot be as strong while all its members are rushing off to school or work, but weekends offer times when bonding can be strengthened.   These are the occasions when children can be given emotional security to sustain them during the week when their mothers are at work.   But this is not the task of the mother alone while husband is off pursuing his own leisure interest.

Finally it occurs to me that there is a great deal to be said for mothers living and working in the real world.   Women of the generation that preferred to be at home for the children suffered their own lack of stimulation if they were not engaged in some occupation that gave them the opportunity to mix with other people.    This is not difficult while children are at school and a housewife-mother can make friendships with other mothers and become occupied in some service at the school.   When the children are older, however, these women sometimes become reclusive, for they have no independent circle of friends and not much to occupy their time.   Perhaps the best mothers are those who are intellectually stimulated in the workplace and who are in touch with the world.                 

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