Not Ok For A Father To Shrug Off Parenting Duties And Blame The Mother For Anything Gone Wrong!

How can a father shrug off any parenting responsibilities and blame the mother for everything that may go wrong? 

With the NCB calling in more and more celebrities for questioning regarding their involvement in the drugs consumption/peddling, there was an article about how one of the actresses who happens to be the daughter of a famous celebrity couple, who are now divorced, was being abandoned by the father for her alleged involvement in this drugs menace.

The article reported that Saif Ali Khan allegedly refused to stand by Sara Ali Khan and support her through the NCB interrogations, and he has also been reported to have put all ‘blame’ squarely on the head of his ex-wife and Sara’s mother, Amrita Singh.

Why is it always the mother to be blamed? Why does she become the sole reason for all her children’s ill deeds?

I don’t draw my conclusions from the said news article, whose credentials appeared dubious to me in the first place. But the issue triggered rage. Because even if that was meant as a scoop, it needs to stop. The mentality, the rationality of this belief of a society that happily passes the blame on to the mother and washes off its hands.

The ‘maa’ syndrome in action

When a child is born, a woman becomes a mother, but don’t forget the man too became a father, and Parenthood is a shared responsibility and not the sole territory of the mother. It’s quite disheartening then even now, we still have to spell it out that a father has parenting responsibilities, and feel privileged and even ‘grateful’ if the male of the species agrees to it.

This really angers me. Why is his consent then required for any decision in the upbringing of a child? Why should any mother listen to any opinions from him about how to parent, if he can shrug off his part?

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It’s like saying that a woman turns a mother, but a man stays man – a father in certain situations, especially when speaking of his ‘rights as a father’, but a man forever. A woman is however, treated as if she had forever been a mother and never a human being for herself.

All responsibilities always belong to a woman, now a mother

As I have been told times and again by those around me – such has been the situation from times immemorial, and passed on across generations. The belief that children are the sole responsibility of the mother, their upbringing her sole territory, while the man of the house goes out to earn means of livelihood for the family.

It’s a pity that while the man who returns to the house, which is now a home, seeks and demands peace of mind there. The woman isn’t however, entitled to this home and the peace it can give, because it’s never ever acknowledged that homemaking is a full time job too. One that has no breaks and relaxations.

We say enough! Time for a change

Well, if that has been the tradition since forever, it’s time to make a change now. Don’t pass on the blame. Accept that Parenting has always been a shared responsibility. And it always will be. If the child is influenced by the mother’s words, the same child emulates the father’s behaviour. It’s both together who shape the child’s conduct.

When I say this, I am not trying to undermine single parent families, or say that children of single parent families aren’t raised well, but that when it’s both parents raising a child, then it’s always a shared responsibility, even when the parents are no longer a couple.

Don’t blame the mother alone for the fallouts, or blame the father alone. Blaming only the mother is an outcome of a mentality that was redundant all along, and should be recognised as such. Such mentality needs to change.

Understand too, that the child itself is an independent individual capable of making choices, and after a certain period also capable to take decisions. When the child errs, rather than being fixated on the whys and blaming each other, think of how to improve.

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