Guilty Until Socialised Innocent

Some days ago I read a heartening albeit surprising article about parents today.

Apparantly parents, especially mothers, of our generation are racked by far more guilt than our predecessors - that wasn't the surprising bit - but they also spend far far more focused and quality time with their children than those of the earlier generations!

Now this latter bit of information was startling. As a new mom I too am constantly plagued by a sense of insufficient time and inadequate attention. I too feel that I am depriving my child of something fundamental in parenting whenever I am at work, at the gym, working on my laptop, surfing channels, meeting friends.

I was happy to realise that actually the time that we do manage to make for our children is not only quantitatively more than what many in our parent's generation did, but qualitatively better too. More focused, richer in content and deeper in bonding.

Happy research results which I read, filed in memory and forgot.

This evening my husband and I came back early from work, met our daughter at my mother's place, which is barely a few doors away, and then while she was having her supper I realised I had some work to catch up on, so I walked home leaving my husband to bring our baby back.

They followed soon, by which time I was deep in the middle of multi tasking - watching a TV show I had recorded and clearing some mail on my laptop.

My daughter plonked herself on my bed, played with my books and wires, hugged and kissed me, romped around, eventually got bored and went off to play with her nanny cheerily. I continued working.

My 2 year old has taken to trying on every adult piece of footwear lying around the house so I can hear her coming from the other end of the house, clip clopping in my slippers or my husband's shoes.

Everytime she walked into the room I lowered the laptop screen, gave her a big smile and hug and felt that stab of guilt. Why was I working when I had come home early and why was I not giving her my entire attention?

And suddenly there flashed before my eyes images of my home maker mother during my growing years. Ma cooking. Ma serving. Ma tending to dad's needs, his parent's needs, our needs. Ma directing the help. Ma buying grocery.

Ma was always busy. And never guilty about neglecting us. If anything at all, she found raising us to be a full time job, a pleasurable one for sure, but one that only added to that laundry list of other duties that kept her busy. There was no sense that the cooking or the cleaning or the serving was in any way taking time away from her 'parenting' duties.

And then it dawned on me that this guilt that I feel every single moment is a product of socialisation and gender stereotyping at its most fundamental level.

A mother who is too busy to play with her baby because she's cooking, cleaning, running house has no guilt. A mother who is ocassionally busy working on a laptop, working out at the gym, meeting a friend for drinks, is committing a double crime. She is not only depriving her child of her mental and / or physical time, she is also crossing the gender lines and being 'busy' with what 'dads' ought to be busy with.

I know at a conscious level we have all left behind these stereotypes sometime back. None of us are ostensibly thinking like this.

But deep down, the socialisation runs in permanently etched furrows upon the mind. My husband feels no similar guilt when he works at home. And I know, even though I hate cooking and almost never cook, if I were to occupy myself in the kitchen with my toddler romping around, tugging at my shirt ends, I would feel no guilt either.

Because that image would overlap beautifully, seamlessly and therefore sinisterly, over the image of me and my mother when I was a child.

That is the real danger of socialisation. It is comfortable. It is familiar. And it operates at levels that we are not even aware of.