As HomeMaker you’re a great role model of work life balance, family values and priorities in life. Our think tanks, social scientists, politicians and people in general talk endlessly about the problems in our society and their root causes- like our education system, opportunities for young people etc.
But why doesn’t anyone notice this obvious fact – what has changed in last 50 years or since the greatest generation? One factor may be the sanctity and natural harmony of a secure family. Earlier we used to have respectable wages where an honest day’s work indeed resulted in an honest day’s pay. Families could afford to have one parent focus on the overall growth and nurturing of family. Full time work used to pay respectable wages so that the natural balance of ‘working for wage-earning’ and ‘working for nurturing’ were perfectly symbiotic roles – working as a team making each other stronger and that way families benefited – our society benefited – our nation benefited.
We have now created an economic environment that compels families to be two-income households in order to have a decent standard of living, to give their children (future of our nation) safe, healthy upbringing.
By making both parents work full-time, we have already disrupted the natural balance and added more stress to an otherwise joyful journey of raising a family.
Even in cases where economic considerations may not be a factor and both spouses decide to pursue career and family in parallel without taking any break, detour or a slowdown, as a society it’s high time that we come up with innovative, family-friendly models of work/life balance.
Those with greater potential and resources -to be able to raise children who’d have higher probability of becoming successful contributors in the world- have very limited flexibility to do so due to the career demands. That doesn’t make sense- the so called ‘parenting penalty’ is a losing proposition for a society. This could be a reason why some nations are facing the challenge of shrinking population!
These situations make it imperative that we, as a society and as individuals come up with new ideas and compassionate solutions to address the imbalance between home and career. For example, we could create a social arrangement modeled after the proverb “It takes a village to raise a child”, where the grandparents’ generation can actively participate in raising children and help with other nurturing tasks. The bridge between the grandparents’ generation and future generation will become mutually rewarding experience. The future generation will benefit from the affectionate care, life experiences, wisdom and overall mental leisure of the seniors; while the cute creatures of the future generation can fill grandparents’ golden years with giggles, joyful mischiefs and may be some extra meaning too! It could be a ‘Win-Win-Win’ situation, for all three generations would benefit!