By Sunita Palita

As more and more women go out to work, equations on the home front are facing turbulent weather, points out Sunita Palita.

Rahul and Vatsala are both excellent management professionals in their respective workplaces. At home, they are man and wife. They first met in Singapore at a conference and with common personal and professional interests they decided to tie the knot.

There were many deterrents, including parental objections but they managed to overcome them. The duo earned kudos for handling the conflict with sensitivity. Nothing then had seemed more beautiful than this self-arranged marriage.

Three years later, Rahul and Vatsala find themselves facing a new challenge, the ‘personality clash’ as they call it. Rahul is in a dilemma. Ranged on two sides are an ailing parent and move to another city and, the wife’s career and an altered job structure. A decision in favour of one equates ‘unfairness’ to the other. The issues in focus are identity, career and responsibility.

Does this situation warrant sacrifice? If yes, from whom? Rahul sums up his marriage as: ‘‘Our marriage withstood all kinds of external pressure but ‘us’ against our marriage is ruining it all.’’

MARRIAGES UNDER PRESSURE
Rahul and Vatsala are not the only couple facing critical commands from the changing role patterns of men and women today. Though the rights and the wrongs in a marriage are always relative, more and more marriages are crumbling under pressures demanding critical decisions in favour of the family as a unit, while affecting one partner adversely. In most cases though, women are seen as the worst sufferers.

But why should a woman alone be asked to give in or why should she give up more than her husband to make a marriage work? Is it fair to ask a woman to be the proverbial ‘sacrificial lamb’? Why should a woman’s career and her personal desire be sacrificed at the altar of marriage? At this juncture, rises the issue of economic independence.

RETHINKING REQUIRED
It is an acceptable precinct today that women be given equal opportunities for education and employment. But behind the closed doors of a home, equality has not stepped in fully. While not disputing that the mother is the natural caretaker of the child, the crucial factor of joint parenting does not go down too kindly with the present day youth.

Once married and confronted with the actual rearing of the family, men often find it difficult to shoulder major responsibility at home because of their job compulsions. Long working hours impose still more pressures, making things go from bad to worse. In similar circumstances if a woman suffers the same, she is expected to leave the job or in the absence of a support structure at home alter her job structure.

In fact it appears that though issues like changing of jobs for the sake of husband and family can be handled without reaching a breaking point, a fear grips the families when it comes to assuming responsibility of children while both parents are away at work.

NO CHOICE
Many a workingwoman today is seen succumbing to emotional and physical pressures arising out of home and work responsibilities. This, even as a majority of women have to work because of reasons economic.

A national level statistical update shows that 80 per cent of women in the workforce come from the economically deprived class and are forced to work outside home due to financial compulsions. Not undermining the contribution of the remaining 20 per cent of women who support the intellectual strength of the country at large, one is still under an ethical binding to speak in favour of those who toil hard to meet their survival needs.

Isn’t it time therefore, that if women are increasingly shouldering the burden out of home, men learn to do the same within the home?

Got comments or questions? E-mail us at femina@timesgroup.com with ‘versus— At Home At Work’ in the subject line.