“I Am A Housechild!” – When My Child Surprised Me

What is a housewife? Is she wedded to the house?

Last Saturday when we were preparing for breakfast, suddenly my 8 year old son said Mumma, ” I feel like I am a house child.”

Surprised by the word I asked him what he meant by that. And there was a lot more surprise coming my way as the answer was one I never expected. He said,” Mumma, you are a housewife. You take care of the house and do household chores. I am also doing chores like you. So I am also a house child.” That made me literally go mad for a moment. I was very furious to hear that from my tiny lil boy. But I kept calm, trying to figure out where this thought came from. At the meantime I realized instead of thinking where the idea came from, right at that time the necessity was to clear that thought.

The conversation was over. But since that day that word is lingering in my mind. “Housewife”.

What exactly does a housewife mean? Are we wives of the house? Like just brought in to take care of the house? Is that the only identity a woman has?

When this thought comes to an 8 year old, specially when we at our home never discuss anything as such, then it’s worrying me, thinking of where did he learn that.

The only answer I can find to it is, ‘the environment’.  The society where we live, the TV programs that we watch – everything is conditioned like that. The mindset people have got that affects us everywhere we go. So even when we as parents try to teach the values to our children, they tend learn different things from the environment other then home. So what’s our responsibility so as to provide a good environment for children where they can learn good values??

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Nowadays people talk a lot about women empowerment. But do we really need to empower women?

Women don’t need to be empowered. Women don’t need to compete with men to prove that they are equal to men. What we need is just for people to mind their own business and stop trying to protect us. We women are self content in ourselves. We don’t need anyone’s help, permission to do anything.

I have left my job to take care of my baby. That was my choice and decision. I cook for my family whenever I want and when I don’t feel like cooking then I hire a cook. I take time for myself to explore my ideas and to do things that makes me happy. Nothing is an obligation for me and nobody can or does force me to do anything. I feel lucky that I got a husband, family and friends around me who don’t try to empower me. They just let me be myself.

So environment with values that we can give to our children can happen by practicing few simple things. The women out there in all the world need to be free to love themselves. If they love themselves then only can they love everyone unconditionally. Men don’t need to protect us, they just need to let us be ourselves. That’s it… and the world will be a beautiful place.

First published here.

Image via Pexels

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