Hats off to working mothers

By ADAM vs EVE
Published January 28, 2010

Eve says: Hats off to working mothers

In a perfect world where everything comes easy and life is without hardships, mothers do not have to work. They should stay at home and take care of their children, at least until the last child is 5 or more years old. The perfection creed reads that the father should work and provides for the family.

Then again, ours is not a perfect world, is it? Assuming you are a career woman who has been through college, then secured a very good job. The natural thing is to settle down and start a family. You and Mr. Right walk down the isle, recite your vows, and leave the chapel, church, mosque or Attorney General’s office hoping to start a family together. You both go to work and meet in the evening, to discuss the day’s events. Being a modern couple, you make dinner together and the day ends, leaving you feeling content. Everything is in place and perfect, because you are a wife, a career woman, and managing just fine.

Sooner or later, mother nature beckons and your motherly instincts go into overdrive. You see a child on the street, and wish it were yours. Two or three conversations with your husband, and you decide that it is time for your family to grow.

Your company graciously grants you maternity leave, and the clock starts ticking! You have exactly three months to give birth, get acquainted, bond with your child, and learn to breastfeed, bathe and clothe it (clumsily at first), witness it’s umbilical cord drop off, and very quickly wean it on solid foods. Within three months you learn to be a mother, and either go back to work, or kiss your career goodbye!

Assuming you opt to stay at home (thanks to your financially stable husband), your career is on hold entirely until you have that tubal ligation; all because we do not have ‘mother-friendly’ company laws. Going back to work after a very long time could also be quite a laborious experience. We live in a fast world, so when you eventually go to work, you have to take an extra course in order to fit into a career you thought you knew everything about.

This being an imperfect world, not all women have the luxury of staying at home as their rich husbands take care of them. Not all women who have children are married, let alone to rich husbands. Again, and most important, not all men are responsible husbands; they will dump women as soon as they fall pregnant, because one holds them accountable.

For a working mother, the time to go home to her children after work never reaches soon enough. Those few hours and the weekends are the only times that they get to be with their children, to teach them about life, with the hope that they have not already been corrupted by the house help or their peers. Mothers who work have no choice; they do so for the sake of their children’s welfare.

Working mothers, I salute you!

Adam replies: Are housegirls the new mums in the house?

Motherhood is a sacred institution. Fact.

Womanhood is not sacred. Debatable.

Journey with me. Thanks.

From the moment a baby is conceived all the way to delivery, nine or so months later, a woman braves a myriad of body changes, and external hurdles. There is the unpredictable, sometimes laughable and sometimes annoying mood swings, culminating into strange impulsive urges. Then enter physiological changes, resulting in weight and size increases, sometimes for good. To cap it all, there is a cocktail of morning sicknesses, causing strong liking or disliking for certain foods, people and places. Crazy.

Then labour pains set in, an average three to six hours of complete anxiety, to usher in a newborn into the world. There are exceptions, of course. There are those who undergo the knife, elective or not, while others deliver prematurely, or to disabled children. Some lose their babies. But on average most women deliver healthy bouncing babies. This, to me, is the only wonder of the world.

After the baby has arrived, the woman goes through unscripted baby blues, those unexplained and anticlimactic feeling, that drive a number of women to the asylum. Suddenly they begin battling a nocturnally skewed being, colic pains, rashes, insensitive housegirls, a husband (or boyfriend), in-laws and, sometimes, other children; all clamouring for her attention. Hectic.

Monthly immunizations, weekly milestones, changing sleeping patterns, doctor’s visits, and the mother finds herself suffocated. Time is up and in the twinkle of an eye, three months are up, and the maternity leave is over. But let me digress and venture into great mothers of yore. Apologies.

Shaka Zulu, that genius of a military ruler from Zulu land, is believed to have lost his mind when his mother, Nandi, died of dysentery. Shaka put on his war regalia, and screamed in anguish, prompting the entire tribe of 15, 000 Zulus to erupt into wailing and shrieking. It was the beginning of the end of Shaka. Even in adulthood (in his forties), Shaka could not imagine life without his mother, who, as far as Shaka could remember, had never been far away from him. Heroic.

German dictator Adolf Hitler’s hatred for Jews stemmed from his belief that, his mother was poisoned to death by a Jewish doctor. Hitler was 18 when it happened. What took place later amomg the Jews is permanent and painful in the annuls of history. Unimaginable.

There are endless stories of great word leaders, including Napoleon, Martin Luther King Jnr, George Washington, and Gandhi, whose mothers played great roles in their lives. There are also notorious figures like Al Capone, who traces his failures to the lack of attention in life. Interesting.

Closer home, many people trace their good habits, and strict upbringing to their mothers. Every year musicians look for different ways of expressing their love for their mothers. One needs to look at the level of irresponsibility in our political leaders, to realize that something in their upbringing was lacking. Shocked?

Back to our point,when a woman makes the ‘painful decision’ and goes back to work; who does she leave her precious child with? A total stranger called a house girl, earning anything between Kshs.1,500 and Kshs.5,000 per month (The horrors that housegirls subject children to, is a story for another day). That a well educated, sophisticated mother with titles such as BSc, MSc, and who belongs to various clubs (chamas to be precise), can actually leave her 3-month- old helpless angel in the hands of an often illiterate stranger, ranks as one of the most weird decisions made by women in recent times. Most of these children go through an average of three housegirls annually. Stupid.

The reason (or is it excuse) for this behavior? Rent, food, clothing, good living etc. But is that the real reason? So how come the sonkos who live in Nairobi’s Runda, Kileleshwa, Lavington and have no problem paying rent or buying food, still have only two or three children? Selfish.

Well here is the cold truth: women loathe motherhood because it ties them down, reduces their marketability, distorts their figures, erases their identity and kills their spirit. Women crave the same independence that men seem to command, and you need not go further than the trousers, that have become an obsession amongst women. Less women are wearing skirts and dresses (what are those?) and the market for petticoats long dried up. He he.

Unfortunately, nature did not design it that way. Female species were created for motherhood. Period. And all those sex changes, homosexuality, and whatever veering from the norm you know of, will never change the fact that female are the only ones who can, and will bear children. Men have accepted this, and have no problem with it. It is time that women accepted their role in the society, stuck to it, give birth and take care of the babies, until they are of school going age. The rest, as they say, are excuses. Right.

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