Monday, March 9, 2015

Where is the Family?

This is the bigger problem i wanted to mean in my previous post as well


Am attempting to acknowledge a problem in this post and not trying to address it with a solution. This attempt is limited to my personal experience and observations. No blaming anyone here for its beyond anyone's control.

We are almost in the last stages of the transition where it has become a rare newspaper article to find a happy combined family in India.

While both husband and wife work to earn a living, individuality has taken more priority. Most of the cases, both earn because there is no other option.  And the kids are becoming affordability in terms of money and effort. Ofcourse some grand-pas and grand-mas are available by default who are, at the best, emotionally forced to take the burden of handling the grand children. I start late to work because of flexible timings, i walk 25 mins to office, on my way i notice the dry, unpleasant, suffering but well-to-do(financially) faces of the retired elderly who take back their grand children back home from the day-cares, i dint need an additional mind reader. I dont know if they had their own plans if not dreams of their retirement life, they dont have that luxury anyways, in some cases they might even have to stay away from their spouses to work for their grand children. Let us not even dare say whether elderly actually need financial and physical support and care from their children. Grand-Children seem happier though. But are they aware of what they miss? they wont and they will grow to manifest the new reality.

Whats wrong with the new reality? isn't it how west already works? isn't that the next level of living ? Let us forget west for a minute, take the same situation before and after transition. We mostly had our males working in the combined family, children got the love and care directly from home, spouses took care of each other more easily, you had so many people at home to share the financial and physical burden. Am ofcourse talking about an ideal family where everyone worked for the welfare of the family, the more self-centered the more lonely one would want to be. I cant imagine an individual having a problem that would be unattended by someone in the family. There wasn't a need for separate child care, elderly care, home care...etc. Now compare that to today's well intentioned nuclear couples as a family. Both give good space to each other, respect each other, kids to the healthiest school, get to share the home loan burden, go for the 2nd and 3rd apartments to secure the future living, buy everything that is buyable, do better than the next apartment guy, oh wait am all talking about materials, what about the love that family would need? i don't know, it probably lives in phone calls and weekend restaurants once in a while, child might prefer the nanny's face than mom's, have no luxury to take care of parents even if they would want to, instead of everyone working for the family, its individuals could be on contract for his/her own individual reason. But going back to past is childish! really ? why should pleasantness be past?

Am I blaming it all on working women? No, am blaming everyone including the economy which forces everyone in the family into working mode most of the times. Am keeping aside those who work because of individuality and attitude. But individuality naturally comes up with everyone who starts working. there is no harm except the family thing takes a beating. Why dont we have a situation where just one person works for the family irrespective of the gender which would suffice without traveling abroad staying away from spouse, kids and parents. And they say it would take 70 years more for the women to earn at par with men. It is more than 9-6 job most of the times, to add, the commute to work could consume more of your life than spouse. Not anymore people are surprised to get to diabetes, BP, heart and knee problems at the early ages. Purpose of survival becomes survival

Shouldn't we anyways sacrifice something to get something else in life? Exactly, what are we sacrificing to get what?

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