Haritha Sudha Maheshkumar
3 min readJul 10, 2020

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You’re 30 and busy, but are you hearing your mother enough?

There's something that's been going on in my mind for a while - Insecurities faced by women of the previous generation - primarily by mothers. Let's just talk about the middle class non-working mothers from the older generation for a second. Or even working mothers to some extent.

Due to the deep patriarchal conditioning, the choices, the situations in those times or whatever reasons at that time and age - they have spent /sacrificed their lives for their families - husband, kids, extended family etc. Not taking anything away from them, as a lot of them have done it willfully as well.

Now that we have all grown up, and their husbands are close to retirement / already retired - they start facing insecurities which go like 'now what am I doing with my life’, 'what has my life meant to me' and the regular argument from the husband, or the fight with the kid, or some conflict in the extended family (not in a good tone, cos more often all of this was because we took them for granted and pushed a lot on them but only now is all of it making sense to them cos they see it in a different light) suddenly start getting tied back to their question of 'who is there for me? I have done everything for them, now all I get is this treatment?’. I’ll tell you the lowest low — If somebody else in the house learns to cook for example, then their fear of becoming useless and unwanted is HUGE. Heard it more than once from more than one mother. We tend to say they’re dramatic when they pass such comments. We become impatient with them. How ignorant of us.

Cos it is Frikkin' existential crisis at this age!!

Are we being aware and are we consciously looking out for them? I see this in bits and pieces with my own mother, have heard enough stories from friends (yes, when I talk about something it does have enough data points/real life incidents where it stems from and I don’t take others problems lightly) to know that there is a pattern, and it does not come as a surprise cos we saw it coming with the decades of patriarchal conditioning.

I so deeply feel bad because the thought of them not having lived their lives for themselves is hitting them at an age where they have lived most of their peak years. We are fighting so hard that the next generation of women don’t have to question their existence when they grow up by inculcating freedom of thought, choice and action, BUT

What are we doing to make the remaining of our mothers/aunties/chachis/maasis/chithis/athais lives better and more meaningful? Thoughts?

Are we really ready to call them 'collateral' damage in our movement for feminism? If yes, isn’t it unfair? What extra measures are you taking to make your mom smile more than she is, already? It isn’t really rocket science. Reducing her emotional burden by a little bit may add more years to her life - whether or not you stay close to them. I do understand that most of us are away from our homes. One small yet consistent step can go a long way in improving their quality of rest of their lives! You figure out what’s required for her. No one solution fits all here.

Cos it is a mental health issue and we are ignoring this way too much!

And, we owe it to them, don’t we? Their lives revolved around us, and the only things they invested in (us), aren’t ready to go that extra mile! Na na. We can do better and give them those extra smiles and years of life!

This is NOT empty nest syndrome. Partially yes because it stems there, but the implications are higher cos she is a woman. Please don’t hit me up with whataboutery! Thanks

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