{"id":6335,"date":"2016-04-28T14:06:02","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T08:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6335"},"modified":"2016-04-28T14:06:02","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T08:36:02","slug":"dispelling-the-myth-of-the-housewife-who-sits-at-home-and-does-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=6335","title":{"rendered":"Dispelling the Myth of the Housewife Who \u201cSits at Home and Does Nothing\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\nM<\/span>y mother<\/a> is an urban woman who had an English-medium education. She has Bachelors and Master\u2019s degrees in Arts, and is a voracious reader. She\u2019s never shied away from speaking her mind and has almost never been politically correct. The word \u201cdiplomatic\u201d doesn\u2019t exist in my mother\u2019s dictionary. She wears whatever she likes whenever she likes, others\u2019 opinions be damned. She stands her own ground in arguments no matter who\u2019s at the other end, seldom puts up with people\u2019s nonsense (she gives it back in equal measure), and has always been a self-assured woman. She\u2019s one of the most confident people I\u2019ve ever known, forever comfortable in her 61-year-old skin.\n\nMy mother is also a housewife<\/a> by choice, and has been one since the day she got married.\n\nSurprised? More often than not, we think of the housewives around us \u2013 whether mothers, grandmothers<\/a>, aunts or neighbours \u2013 as though cut from the same domesticated cloth. Many from the millennial generation think that all they do is cater to their husbands, houses, and kids, and otherwise just \u201cdo nothing at all\u201d.\u00a0 Even the movies we grew up on show homemakers as in-law-worshipping, always submissive to their husbands and families, weak, and rarely opinionated or having strong personalities, or any personality at all. Thanks, Bollywood. But why can\u2019t we showcase, or be okay with, badass women<\/a> choosing to be housewives?\n\nI\u2019ve asked my mom on many occasions, like we tend to question most homemakers, whether she\u2019s ever dreamt of pursuing a career or having an income. \u201cDo you think you were brought up just on money? I provided everything else,\u201d comes the proud response. My mother was perfectly happy being the provider of everything apart for the salary \u2013 her ambition was to be a mother, at any and every time her kids needed her. She did work before she got married<\/a>, first teaching at a kindergarten and then at a desk job for a while, but never developed a liking for the work life. She\u2019s never regretted her choice, or let anyone make her feel ashamed or guilty for it. And we shouldn\u2019t either.\n\nWhat\u2019s it that they do at home? Till my brother and I were almost adults, we didn\u2019t have a driver, a cook, or full-time domestic help. It was my mom \u2013 like countless other homemakers \u2013 who travelled by BEST buses<\/a> to drop and fetch us from birthday parties and swimming classes, walked to bazaars to stock up the kitchen and cook our meals, helped with our homework whenever needed, attended all PTA meetings, accompanied us to the doctor, and cared for us when we were sick. And she still made time for herself \u2013 to read, do her beloved newspaper crosswords and sudokus, meet friends, shop, write her daily diary, or do whatever else she wanted.\n\n

If women who choose to be housewives are truly owning it, who are we to look down at them?<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nFrom a young age, my brother and I were taught to be independent and self-reliant, my mom forcing me to travel alone by bus by the age of 10 so that I didn\u2019t need her to fetch me from friends\u2019 houses. She stayed out of our sibling fights \u201cbecause you need to learn to deal with problems yourself\u201d, and made both my brother and me do several household chores (PSA: kids are \u201cfree house help\u201d for middle-class families<\/a>). She taught me to fill pass books and do the rounds of banks for financial work in the pre-netbanking era. I could go to her for any questions I had about boys, periods, sex, and everything else under the sun, even if they got a little weird. And no matter how many times I asked if she\u2019d ever had great ambitions outside the four walls of our home, she had only one answer: that she was happiest being a homemaker, and had no qualms wearing that badge with pride.\n\nIf women who choose to be housewives are truly owning it, who are we to look down at them? We shame our kind for choosing to \u201csit at home and do nothing\u201d (have you ever seen a housewife\u2019s schedule?), or assume that she\u2019s confined to the home life because of outside factors \u2013 not having qualifications or finding a job, family objections or because she\u2019s unambitious. Why can\u2019t we treat the homemakers around us with the same respect that we give that CEO who\u2019s killing it in the boardroom or the lawyer who spends hours poring over her case files?\n\nThere are those though, who say that being a housewife is the most thankless unpaid job<\/a>, and that once in a while we should express our gratitude to the ladies who spend all their days at home, for everything they do for us. But all they need is the same respect one gives a career-woman for the choices she makes \u2013 for isn\u2019t that what feminism is all about? Let\u2019s be proud of the women making their life decisions of their free will, whether they choose to fly a plane 30,000 feet above sea level or to run a home the way they wish. They never needed your permission anyway. At least my mom doesn\u2019t.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s be proud of the women making their life decisions of their free will, whether they choose to fly a plane 30,000 feet above sea level or to run a home the way they wish. They never needed your permission anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":397,"featured_media":6336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[9969,4722,10336,5858,10337],"class_list":["post-6335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","tag-ambitions","tag-career","tag-housemaker","tag-housewife","tag-income"],"yoast_head":"\nDispelling the Myth of the Housewife Who \u201cSits at Home and Does Nothing\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let\u2019s be proud of the women making their life decisions of their free will, whether they choose to fly a plane 30,000 feet above sea level or to run a home the way they wish. 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