Headbath

This post is part 2 of a three part series exploring the conundrum of modern motherhood. Read part 1 . Am I a SAHM? While the "housewife" just makes sure her family is clothed and fed, the SAHM clothes hers in hand spun, vegetable-dyed, Cottage Emporium cotton and feeds them organic quinoa salads everyday. Rather than spending her day phoning her friends about her domestic accomplishments, the SAHM will flood her social media with lomo filter applied photographs of health food and responsibly-sourced clothing, and happy baby smiles.  And maybe blog about it. SAHMs, in this brave new post-housewife world, now feel the need to justify their choice to stay at home because they don't have a fat pay check to show for their domestic accomplishments. They occupy the other end of the spectrum, treating their home life with the kind of zeal most of us would reserve for monetary remuneration only. In raising E, I find myself wanting to hone my domesticity - cook great mea...

When I was growing up, our mothers either worked outside the home or were "housewives". Regardless of what else they did with their time, the general expectation was that mothers were the main caretakers of their household and by inclusion, children while fathers played featuring roles as either chief disciplinarian just wait till your father gets home , chief maker of fun because he was driven mad by guilt for being away from his family , or that guy who hogs the TV when he is at home. Over the years there has been growing discomfort about the term, 'housewife'. We've seen variations like home manager, homemaker, and more recently, the exceedingly annoying 'stay-at-home-mom' or SAHM. If I were your mom, I'd be your mother . It's not like these women are distributing business cards. Why bother with a designation? As more mothers started participating in the corporate workforce hurrah for liberalisation and globalisation , suddenly, there was a...

There's a fair bit of hand-wringing on the Internet over how impossible it is to buy anything for your child without reducing it to a binary decision of kittens or buses, pastels or dark colours, Spiderman or Barbie. Two-year old E doesn't know the difference between a girl and a boy. Although she has, internally, decided that women wear kaajal and men don't. The kohl-lined eyes of our AC repairman widened at being called 'auntie' by a little girl. She knows that, visually, men and women are different and she can tell the difference between an 'uncle' and an 'auntie'. But to her, all kids are just babies and she can't really differentiate boys from girls. So it frustrates me when I go to a kids' clothes shop or toy shop and there's a clear demarcation between Those Things That Are Meant For Boys generally housed in areas of the store painted in solid red or blue  and Those Things That Are Meant For Girls delicately arranged in areas ...