To Be Or Not To Be Home?

RE # 15 Mr Fosa
``The DOWRY Culture of INDIA singularly has given rise to REBOUND phenamenon of resurgent zeal among south asian woman to ``EARN`` as if then they will be ``WORTH`` SOMthing ...

POOR SouthAsian Men like Subroto ...have to be victim of this ``complex Inferioisu`` of South Asian WIFES!!!!!!! ``

Gee this is the first time I learnt about my dowry, you can probably tell me where I can claim it from.
Sometimes its not just about the money. For some reason school teachers are not amongst the highest paid workers but they still love their jobs. But still it was interesting to know that South Asian wives work because of ``complex Inferioisu``, would really be interested in knowing why women from other cultures work.

Ah! Come back to Chowk after an absence and the lovely welcome one gets, nice to know one is missed.

#23 Hamidm ``........... there is no dignity of labor in cleaning toilets, changing diapers, cooking runny dal and scrubbing the floor - any idiot, male or female, can do it ................. ``
Well I wear my ``idiotness`` with pride, probably banged my head as a baby, and I never make ``runny dal`` - ah the ``heeng ka tarka`` makes all the difference (knowing your fondness for heeng I am sure you`d love it).

hamidm #23 `` there is no dignity of labor in cleaning toilets, changing diapers, cooking runny dal and scrubbing the floor - any idiot, male or female, can do it ................. ``

spoken like a true pakistani male. and wrong, as pakistani males usually are on things (with a few exceptions like myself).

physical labor may not be mentally challenging, but it is certainly a lot more dignified than wasting one`s time chatting idly with strangers on chowk. which is what you and i are doing. and certainly a hell of a lot more dignified than taking kickbacks and bribes like many senior government officials in pakistan.

you would be more accurate if instead of ``dignity`` you said ``intellectually challenging``. that i would agree on. but then, how many men do really intellectually challenging work - in my experience, half the time in offices is spent attending pointless meetings where everyone loves to hear himself talk and everyone else sleeps with eyes open, politiking, public relationing, stroking egos, flirting (sometimes more than just flirting), writing emails to everyone and his mother just so everyone knows you exist, and sitting idly in cars for a couple of hours each day commuting.

so, you may impress the missus with talk about ``intellectually challenging`` work, but you dont impress anyone who has seen how offices operate. so, ``intellectually challenging`` doesnt cut it either.

it is no surprise therefore that whereas white guys will take up ``intellectually unchallenging`` stuff like fixing things in their house, trimming shrubs and trees by themselves, cooking meals, changing diapers and so on, i have met very few pakistani men in the US who would deign to do these ``undignified`` things.

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hamidm2,

...so I guess you are of opinion that working man and stay at home wife who get divorced by no means deserve 50% of assets each...maybe 90,10?

Prophet (PBUH) was given to Halima bibi because it was a tradition to have males raised by nomads. It was believed that boys who were broached to harsh conditions from childhood would grow up to be strong and since arab tribes took pride in warriors, male strength was highly valued.

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hamidm2

you should write an article also, you definitely have the wit for it. I liked what you said. Yes the old age notions of ``the way to a man`s heart is through his stomach`` (i think its something like this), is just another pathetic way to euphemize women`s so called duty of being in the kitchen 24/7.

Sir Anew
As far as American society and their women are concerned, its nothing more than a case of moral deprivation at the prime level. I never said eastern women should act like their western counterparts, women in America are truly exploited. Eastern women should not be equated with them. There is nothing wrong with women working outside of their homes and at the same time heading a family unit but cooperation from spouse is mandatory. I myself am the progeny of a career oriented mother (she worked for only 5 years) and I think she provided us with just as much nuturing, care, love, etc as any completely ``housewife`` mom would. And to tell you the truth, working outside allowed her to better understand the ambience that she was raising us in and thus she could deal with our issues with a better comprehension than a mother who confined herself to the regular house job. I am not saying a women must be engaged in professional life at all points in her life rather when she finds it necessary she should be allowed to work outside.

Hamidm2 # 23

That pretty much sums up this issue. Not a wishy-washy comfort-zone opinion.

A very good post.

hamidm:

... anyone who cannot follow the instructions on a packet of shan masala to make biryani or korma deserves to starve to death ...

....i know several folks...in particular a poet from TO...who as you suggested if his life depended....

...now, give me a day to get my papers in order...and pray tell me...are there any options?.....lethatl injection or stoning etc...hunger is kinda long drawn out option...let`s get over this quickly

...t

welcome back hamid sahib!

........... there is no dignity of labor in cleaning toilets, changing diapers, cooking runny dal and scrubbing the floor - any idiot, male or female, can do it .................

........ been there done, done that, and i can assure you that if anyone thinks that menial housework is ``real`` work that is at par with writing sonnets or designing microchips, she needs to have her head examined - it is something that you have to do, and it is nothing to be proud of ............remember, cooking as a hobby can be a lot of fun, but it is slave labor if you have to do it three times a day to feed a tribe of apes - that is why we invented takeout chinese and deli sandwiches ............... and you can breast feed a kid and wipe his rear end with love and tenderness fifty times a day, and he can still turn out to be a jihadi suicider ............ this motherhood crap his highly overrated - let`s not forget that our prophet (pbuh), like all other well to do kids in the tribe, was raised by a wet-nanny .............. his mother would not have disgraced her family by taking on this menial job ..............

............so i tell my daughters not to worry about learning to cook and sew and crochet little doilies, instead they should work on getting real jobs and then find a husband who can make his own cup of tea and fetch his own slippers ............ this concept of the housewife as a legitimate career is utter nonsense, cooked up by lazy women who want to stay in bed till noon, and impotent men who feel they are in charge by keeping their woman in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant .........and then, to cover up their own insecurities and prejudics, they utter silly inanities like ``aurat kay haath kay pukkay huay khaney ke baat he kuch aur hai!``............ what nonsense!........... anyone who cannot follow the instructions on a packet of shan masala to make biryani or korma deserves to starve to death ............

A good article.

Working women don`t necessarily mean that they work only because it is a financial need for them. For professional women, it may be a source of satisfaction and it may provide them a feeling of being able to do something creative. Not to mention the benefits of good relationing at office resulting in an enjoyable social life.

Another benefit, working women get from sharing the income for home is that the feeling of husbands that they are the bread winners for their homes remains no more in their attitude.

As far as household jobs are concerned, I bet men are not that bad in cooking as well. If wives can cook parathas, I don`t feel that husbands are nikammas enough to prepare omelettes meanwhile. Cleaning the kitchen, bathroom and killing the insects seems a more suitable job for men instead of women. Children belong to both the spouses. Both can raise them working together. Washing clothes on weekends seems perfectly OK. Both of them can do it together. Why do the women consider that it is only them who can manage the homes ?

However, Being a working women is a matter of choice. No hard and fast rules apply here. Ones who enjoy being in offices should enjoy their lives in offices, for them if satisfaction lies in remaining homes , they are free to spend their lives in homes raising he children.

Please read this article for `a change`

Home, Sweet Home

By Khalid Baig

``My own feeling is that we`ve pushed women too far,`` says Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, the 80 year old Harvard University doctor who is frequently called ``America`s Pediatrician,`` in a recent interview in the Los Angles Times. ``We`ve split them in two, and we have not given them back anything to support themselves on either end.`` He has witnessed what forcing the women into the workforce and the breakdown of the family have done to the American children. ``I just think our country is in deep, deep trouble,`` he agonizes.

Opinion leaders of all persuasions agree. Ask America`s First Lady, who considers herself a champion of women`s and children`s causes. In her 1996 book, ``It Takes a Village,`` she offers this assessment: ``… children`s potential lost to sprit-crushing poverty, children`s health lost to unaffordable care, children`s hearts lost in divorce and custody fights, children`s futures lost in an overburdened foster care system, children`s lives lost to abuse and violence, our society lost to itself as we fail our children.`` This is a society in which by her account: ``homicide and suicide kill almost seven thousand children every year; one in four of all children are born to unmarried mothers, many of whom are children themselves; and 135,000 children bring guns to school each day. Children in every social stratum suffer from abuse, neglect, and preventable emotional problems.`` She also approvingly quotes: ``If you bungle raising your children, I don`t think whatever else you do matters very much.`` It is obvious that America as a nation, has bungled this thoroughly.

Welcome to the dark side of ``Women`s Emancipation.`` Today women are free in America. Free from the protection of a home and the support of a husband who would be responsible to provide for them. They are on their own. In turn, the children have been freed from the rigidities of the traditional home, where father and mother provide for them, take care of them, and guide them. The children are also on their own. Just in case they do not like it, the society has been experimenting with all kinds of poultry farms -day care they call them-to take care of them.

Things have gone so wrong for so long that everyone has lost all hope that the society can rectify it completely and retrace its steps. Hillary Clinton admits: ``My personal wish, that every child have an intact, dependable family, will likely remain a wish.`` So, she is just trying to build a better poultry farm with the help of the whole village. Dr. Brazelton knows that the children need the mother at home. ``I think you are giving a gift to the child when you stay home with him as long as you can.`` However, he knows that it cannot be very long, as, to stay home, ``being just a mother,`` is not good enough any more. He knows the psychological crisis faced by the stay-at-home mothers, so he pleads with everyone to do as much as they can.

Now contrast this with the U.N. edict that the women in the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world, must take up all kinds of jobs outside the home; that the goal should be their total economic independence. In other words, women must be forced outside the home so they are no longer available to take care of the children within the home. They must be ``liberated`` from the home, so they can enjoy the same fruits of ``emancipation`` as the women are ``enjoying`` in the U.S.

The destruction of the family in America, or the West in general, was not planned. It just happened as a logical result of the materialistic, hedonistic, Godless civilizational values that have gripped these societies. But the U.N. decree that the rest of the world must follow the same disastrous path, is something else. It is as if a person lost an eye to horseplay, and now wants everyone else to voluntarily have an eye removed!

It is unconscionable that we should be answering such chicanery with apologetics of the kind that normally begin with, ``Islam also allows women to,`` as in, ``Islam also allows women to work outside the home.`` Yes, it does in case of necessity, but that is beside the point. The real issue is that Islam frees a wife from the burden to provide for the family. It is solely the husband`s responsibility. In return, wife`s main responsibility is to stay home and take care of the children. The primary field of women`s endeavor is the home, sweet home. And this has to be stated without hesitation or apology. The Qur`an says: ``And stay quietly in your homes.``[Al-Ahzab, 33:33]. And the Prophet, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, said: ``The wife is responsible for taking care of the home of her husband, and she will be accountable for those given in her charge.``[Bukhari, Muslim]. This is also the most rewarding job that anyone can think of. The Prophet, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, assured the woman who stays home to take care of the children, that she would be with him in paradise. According to another hadith, during pregnancy and the entire period of nursing, the believing mother is like the soldier on active duty. If she dies, she gets the reward reserved for a martyr. Yet another hadith says to the women: ``Take care of the home. That is your jihad.`` [Musnad Ahmad].

All of these clearly establish the basic division of labor between men and women according to Islam: men are responsible for the affairs outside the home and the women are responsible for taking care of the home. This division is not a relic of some dark past. It is the only basis on which a healthy society has ever been built and can be built today. The nations that have tried to alter this natural arrangement long enough have nothing but grief and trouble to show for their efforts. And they seem to be groping in the dark, unable to undo the damage and get out of the quagmire. Is there any sane reason that those who have the Light should follow them on the dark highway to disaster?

Cipram Ji

This is the inherent submissive attitude I was referring to. If a woman works outside the house whether it be due to financial needs or due to her personal satisfaction in utilizing her education for a better cause, you make it sound as if she is sacrificing a greater purpose of life by succumbing to this, ``one should not go so far away in the pursuit of ambition at the cost her of her family.``
Yes the family unit is very important and must be nurtured as it was orginally designed to be but why can`t we reject the century old notions of women staying in the boundaries of home while husbands work outside. The problem with our society is that we are always crying liberalism, women rights, blah blah blah, but we still act in complete submission when it comes to ancient values that define a women`s place in society. It is a reality because women want it to remain a reality, they do not desire amelioration of their own miserable lives. I truly despise the traditions and cultural beliefs that are inclucated in our youth as far as marriage and role of a women are concerned in our society. So how long is this cycle of women being better off at home and raising kids going to continue???? I have seen female doctors in Pakistan become full time home-makers after getting married. I mean why not give their med school seats to males who are probably in more need of it than these females since all they are going to do is sit at home and prescribe Triaminic to their own kids?????????

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Women went to work. Earning power increased. That led to an increase in housing prices. Now you need two incomes to pay the mortgage. A single income is no longer a valid lifestyle choice in middle class America.

Interesting Article though. Enjoyed reading it and yes the grass is always greener on the other side. We are human after all.