Being a mother is the toughest job in the world. It requires immense patience, diligence, and courage, in the course of molding young souls into responsible individuals who will be capable of obtaining a livelihood one fine day. While the importance and due respect of any job shouldn’t be suppressed, we as a society are at consistent risk of undermining – or worse ignoring – the role of mothers in our lives.
This is the most frequently posed question to any mother who doesn’t pursue a career. The words fully serve the purpose of devaluing everything a mother does for her home and children every day.
This disparaging attitude is now highly prevalent in developing countries like Pakistan, where many women are nowadays joining the workforce, compared to a few years ago. Therefore, mothers who wish to remain housewives, face unjust statements and comparisons with working mothers.
No matter how much religious scholars preach the esteemed importance of motherhood in every religion, we fail to incorporate in us the encouragement and appreciation that every mother is worthy of. Even events like Mother’s Day fail to make up for the lack of acknowledgment and condescending attitude of the larger society.
As children, we are mostly unaware of all the good our mothers are doing for us. In that sense, Mother’s Day helps us in expressing due love and appreciation to our respective moms, but it does not help eradicate perceptions like the above, that are now frequently tossed upon any stay-at-home mother by her friends or even relatives.
In the past few months, there has been a huge emergence of articles and blogs on the internet that laud the services of mothers, compare stay-at-home moms with working moms, praise the contributions of a woman towards her home, and most of all, recognize motherhood as a real job.
Though most of the writers of such pieces are women, men have joined the writing spree as well and actively advocate the hard work of their children’s mothers through such articles. The number of all such writings highlighting the significance of a mother’s role is only increasing with time. Society’s disrespectful attitude toward home-makers explains the sudden need to do so