Working Mothers

Hello everyone!! here I am back with another queer inquisitive thought of my mind..."Working Mothers". I have often wondered that when a child is asked to introduce oneself, the sentence he is asked 'where does your father work ?, and your mother what does she do?", "is she working or not?"

Why can't the question be reversed and the question asked about the father is also asked similarly for the mother.

Surprising the concept of maternity leave always existed, and most of the women preferred to take it after the child is born as that is when the responsibility doubles. But what about Paternity leave?, it took us so many years to realize that a father is also responsible for a child's upbringing. A mother who joins office soon after child birth is looked down upon. Instead of supporting her people will ask her "why so soon it's only 3 months or 6 months." Did anyone for once ask the new father, "why so soon it's only been a day or two."

I often wonder it is not about the enactments, it is about the mindset. Even if these laws are passed will the male chauvinism in the society accept the fact that they will be staying at home feeding or changing diapers of the child while the woman attends her professional duties. There are big corporate houses who provided the benefit of paternity leave but men don't take it, they feel a sabbatical will make them miss opportunities at work.

Women of child bearing age are often discriminated at work place companies often avoid hiring them, Some women complain about adjustment issues after returning from their sabbatical. If we want to work towards an egalitarian society the responsibilities between a man and woman of the same household should be divided equally and such terms coined raising gender discrimination should be avoided.

We should take a conscious decision and delete this term of "working mother" or "career woman" from our vocabulary. These words often send wrong messages and are inappropriate. All such terms used should be ungendered: for example we used to have policeman but now it sounds more appropriate to use police officer, similarly initially it was stewardesses now it is flight attendants.

The term "Working Moms" has such a negative connotation to it that often co-workers discuss how much a working mother can get away at the pretext of her child. Language changes and evolves around with our world. Certain words or phrases become antiquated as they become redundant or improper and of course what may sound offensive to me may not be so for others. The fact that the term "working dad" makes us scrunch our face is telling you how problematic the term "working mom" is.