Role Mix

One of my favourite actress is coming up with movie which deals with situation involving house husband. I am so happy and eagerly looking forward to this movie. Interchange of role of bread winner and home maker is fascinating. Indian society has progressed over the past century. Girls are being educated and are becoming self reliant. At macro level gender discrimination has reduced. We all are happy that girls are being treated equally. But if we do a micro level thought process I feel disappointed on many counts. Family /home is basic unit of society. Our generation of girls born around early eighties are definitely a witness to a huge changeover in ideologies of roles at home. The boys or the men of our generation are much more adaptable, flexible and to some extent helping as compared to men of our mother’s or grandmother’s generation...I know there are exceptions but here I am speaking about majority in general. We have seen our mothers taking majority of the responsibility of household chores whether she was working outside or house maker. This was assumed and I guess never questioned too. But our generation has recognised the need of division of some responsibilities to some extent. But still a lot more remains to be done I feel. Today girls are being given equal chance of education, extracurricular and co-curricular growth. They are trained to be mentally, physically and financially independent. They are excelling in almost all fields. But the question arises is similar training imparted to boys???We are putting all efforts to do upbringing of girls equal to or better than boys..But are we equally focussed in case of boys???Are we training boys to be compatible with new generation of girls??? For instance..nowadays many husbands experiment or do cooking occasionally..but still majority of men don’t know beyond making tea or boiling eggs or preparing maggi..if man of house is not well woman generally do all kinds of food items keeping his health in mind. But vice versa most of men prefer to order from outside or hire a maid to do cooking..I am not against any of the options..hiring a cook,outside food all are fine..but my question is why don’t we teach boys a little cooking as we consciously do in case of girls.. i agree that today in many cases while fixing marriage there is no requirement or condition of girl who cooks well .But food being utmost necessity of life ,basic cooking needs to be taught to each and every individual whether girl or boy..We gift small girls many a times kitchen toy set and they are so happy to play with it..but have we ever experimented gifting a similar set to boys..this wont even strike to majority of us..Cooking is just symbolic of one of the domestic responsibilities .If girls can be taught to fix electrical fuse at home why cant boys be taught little bit of chopping cutting or grocery management..if girls can learn maintenance of vehicles why cant boys learn laundry or domestic help management..If girls can take up decoration work why cant boys take up rangoli work.. Girls are naturally gifted with taking up of multiple responsibilities related to household..They tend to learn just by observation..but in case of boys they are generally not so keen. So its additional responsibility on women of house to consciously involve boys in all activities..in small ways but on day to day basis. With small changes and duties been allotted to boys they would realise and empathise with girls in a better way. They wont feel any activity to be less important. When division of work at home becomes necessary many men become sad .shaadi karke fas gaya..is a popular humour..But if boys are trained since childhood they will adapt to changes in much more similar way as girl does. Only earning money is not the most important task in life. Men of our generation are witness and part of contradictory situations. They are expected to do whether willingly or unwillingly many tasks which they have never seen their fathers doing. Those who are unwilling try to win over the situation by dominating or fighting or at last by surrendering unhappily. In current scenario we can train the upcoming generations to be different. Labelling certain work as Taboo for men needs to be removed in our general household. Gender neutrality in respect of day to day tasks is need of hour. With changes in economic scenario in some years a situation may arise in India where no domestic help is easily available and affordable..in such situation all family members would have to take up responsibility. The way in which we are preparing our girls to do multitasking ,sustaining mental ,physical and emotional pressures we should do it in case of boys too..we need to make boys ready for acceptance of equality or superiority. Most of the trouble comes from conflict and non acceptance of good or better performance. We should take conscious effort towards sensitizing boys towards issue of women respect. Our efforts of making girls independent will be really fruitful only if boys are also aware and sensitized towards the changes and give respect to women at all stages in life.In a family unit there should be no place for Ego issues. All children need to be trained that all work whether household or outside is equal and all have equal right to do or not to do a task or to do in a better way task. If we all take up this responsibility day is not far that instances of work place discrimination, domestic violence, divorce will reduce to great extent. This thought process makes me wonder that if Girls can be house makers then why can’t boys be...If two individuals are equally educated, mentally, socially, physically and financially independent why both should not have equal chance to take decision. What’s wrong if boy wants to manage home instead of working outside. Men can definitely be equally good at managing domestic chores. There is no denying the fact that nature has bestowed responsibility of birth on women. But responsibility of nurturing and growing up of children can be definitely taken up jointly. There is social stigma attached to concept of househusbands. If we are now open to concept of live in relationship, day is not far when we will accept this concept too. Personally for me Win-Win situation is, both boys and girls are educated and trained with a perspective to make them independent individually while recognising and supporting the other gender with equal respect and empathy. If we all do this consciously all our daughters and sons will definitely enjoy happy, peaceful, flexible and comfortable family as well as work life.