Helping is not Sharing

I started off my career in the Banking Industry in Chennai, India. Whenever I think of the initial years of my career, I am always flooded with euphoria. Those were some of the best years of my life. We were a team of like minded individuals (many of us fresh out of college and in our first job) who were willing to give more than a 100% of our time, energy and skill to the work that we had signed up to. Our workplace almost felt like an extension of college, only this time we received a paycheck at the end of the month (we weren’t complaining). With time, my network in the work place grew and I started interacting with more senior colleagues in the organisation.

Apart from all the wealth of work oriented knowledge that I acquired from them, I could also tell that many of them were striving hard to strike some kind of a balance between their personal and professional lives. I recall some of my female colleagues (who were married and had families to look after) describing a typical day of their lives over coffee, to some of us ( juniors at the time). They would start their day as early as 5am getting breakfast ready for the family, packing lunch boxes, getting the kids started off and finally still managing to find their way to work, only to dive deep into a sea of deliverables. Some of them would specifically make it a point to talk about how helpful their better halves try to be in the process. They would give full marks to their better halves for helping them with the household chores (whenever possible), and conclude by stating how blessed they felt to have such supportive life partners. 

I would always walk away from these conversations feeling rather perplexed. There were a number of questions in my mind. When two people decide to get married and start a family, one would think of them as partners who would equally share and be responsible for everything that’s part and parcel of the package. Then how and why did this partnership not apply to household chores? How did the women become primarily responsible for these chores, with the men only choosing to”help” them on and off? How was it possible for the men to get full marks by simply lending a helping hand, while the women had to do so much more to get there? And the biggest question I had was, why were the women and even the men for that matter, not challenging something as obviously biased as this? 

Over a period of time, I was able to connect the dots and find answers to many of these questions. To understand the situation, we have to look at how our previous generations handled this subject. How many of us would have ever seen/ heard of our grandfathers, great grandfathers etc spending hours in the kitchen to cook a scrumptious meal for the family? How many of us can recall our grandmothers (across generations) having a career for themselves? Back then, the women of the family were generally not educated much and hence, were more dependent and had very little exposure to the world outside their homes. As a result, they ended up taking care of all responsibilities inside the house, while the men managed responsibilities outside.

With time, women started stepping out of their homes for education, work etc and slowly but surely, started demonstrating their ability to thrive in the outside world. They started shouldering financial responsibilities with the male members of their family and in many cases, even became the sole bread winners. While on one hand, women were breaking a number of glass ceilings, on the other hand, their own mental conditioning (over the years) and belief systems of the society they belonged to (pertaining to family ethics, the “good wife” definition etc), did not allow them to let go of any of their pre-existing household responsibilities. Even in cases where the men of the house willingly tried to perform household chores, it was always considered as a “help” or a “favour” they were doing, purely out of love and affection for their better halves. 

In my view, it was quiet evident that there was a need for a shift in mindset, in this context. There was a need to look at marriage as a partnership between two individuals who played interchangeable roles, based on a shared responsibilities concept. There was a need to move away from a model where married partners had the option of choosing to “help” each other, to a model where both partners jointly owned and equally shared all responsibilities in a marriage (be they household, financial or absolutely anything else).

Simply put, in today’s world, men and women are equally competent. Marriage and thereafter kids, introduces a whole lot of new responsibilities and pressures in the lives of a couple. If the couple can share ALL responsibilities based on their individual strengths (steering clear of any pre-existing gender biases), that will help ease out a lot of pressure on the couple and thereby the entire family. By sharing responsibilities you ensure that neither partner feels overly loaded and drained (in the long run). When you equally share the load with your partner, you demonstrate to him/her that you care. You boost each other’s self-confidence resulting in your marriage becoming a partnership between two equals. In a nutshell, sharing responsibilities makes for a mature, endearing, respectful, balanced and inclusive relationship.

Oops, it’s time for me to sign off now. I am going to catch up with a few friends today, while my Husband manages the kids and the household chores. Good day to you.