Mothering Today – Changes & Challenges

This post is an entry to 4th Annual International Women's Day Blog Contest conducted by www.IndusLadies.com

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Motherhood is wonderful. Motherhood is challenging. Well, it is wonderfully challenging. It is a phase that makes a woman, a woman of substance. A woman's life takes a turn ever since her womb starts brimming with life and activity. She is her child's first friend, first teacher, first guardian and the first contact with the world. From the time a woman conceives, she becomes the cautious lioness who tends to herself with all care so that the life growing inside her is hale and hearty. She spares no efforts in preparing herself and the life inside her to enter an uncertain world with a certain confidence. She becomes her husband's backbone, her child's world and her family's honor. She emerges from motherhood stronger, versatile and perceptive. It earns her a respect, an esteemed respect for a lifetime.

Coming to present day, motherhood too has evolved with changing times. Mothering today has only made a woman stronger as she battles this male dominated world with an indomitable will to prove, to survive and to show the world that, a woman despite shouldering the domestic aspect of a household, despite having the herculean task to bring up her children in the right way, still manages to balance her personal and professional life perfectly well. If one takes a quick look at mothering in the yester years, one will realize that it was a full time job way back then. In those days, not many women were motivated to study or work. However, as the world evolved, as times changed, as certain courageous mothers set examples by becoming successful entrepreneurs, sports players, teachers, doctors, lawyers and what not, it has given a new lease of life to womanhood and motherhood both. Notwithstanding that, a modern mother's achievements have never stopped her from being the doting mother to her children, the loving wife to her husband and the matriarch of her family. But that does not rule out the underlying fact that mothering today has become more demanding than before.

Mothering today is not easy. In what we call the fast world, babies grow fast into toddlers in a blink of an eye. And toddlers, suddenly become children, as one fine day, they start asking a lot of questions, some of which leave a face palm expression on our faces. In an uncertainty ridden world where unsuspecting perils knock at the most inopportune times, it is a daunting task for a mother to prepare her child to shield herself/himself from the lurking dangers of a rotting society. A mother today may not be reading out stories or excerpts from epics to her children, but will be constantly preparing her children on how to stay away from strangers and how not to get lured into traps set by miscreants/abusers/the demented of our decaying society. Precisely, a mother of today has to force her child to grow up sooner than expected.

Mothering today faces challenges on the academic front too. Education today, thrives on marks more than on knowledge. So, a mother has to make sure that her child manages to run the race with confidence. She fights hard to spend quality time with her child when not studying by making sure he/she is comfortable on the social front. And talk about social networking! It is an extremely challenging task for a modern day mother to keep a tab on her child's activities in the virtual world (which is no less dangerous than the real one). 

Unlike the ladies of yester years who married young, mothered young, gave a second thought to career and evolved in the shadows of their better halves, the women of today have a different approach towards motherhood and life. Today's mothers also contribute towards ensuring a security for themselves and the family, besides being just the homemaker. Today even, mothers who are just homemakers utilize their free time by working from home part time or indulging in new hobbies that fuel their passion for things they love doing. And I feel, that is a lovely change in the modern mothers. Today's mother is the perfect role model for her child. She walks that extra mile with her spouse to make sure, her child has a secure future in this world where standard of living is touching greater heights. And most importantly, she shoulders that important responsibility of making her child understand the mammothian efforts that are invested in every penny earned, considering that today's children were born in much better times.

In the times I grew up, we did use words like generation gap. But then, generation gap meant a gap of 20-30 years between two generations. Today, it is barely 2-3 years. And that is when I realize, how much the world has changed. I was more innocent in my younger days than my son (a toddler now) will be in his coming years. As as a mother, when I ask my mother about how difficult it is going to be, bringing up my son, she replies, “Every challenge is relatively difficult with time. In our times, our challenges appeared colossal to us. However, now I feel your challenges will be more difficult than ours. In the times when you grew up, there was no Internet, no misleading advertisements and no influence of the virtual world. So, it was easier to get your attention. For me as a mother, life was supposedly easier without these deterrants. But then, every generation outgrows the subsequent one. So do the challenges. And life was never easy and will never be. So just keep sailing. Only make sure that you control the sail of your boat.”

With that said, I believe, mothering today is a challenge that will only keep getting tougher and tougher with time. Just that we mothers have to make sure that we control the direction of our children’s' lives till they are mature enough to lead their own.

Cheers & God bless...!!