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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Work-life...

...balance is in the air these days. Most working, young moms are pre-occupied with it. I've decided there's only work-life imbalance. How minimal you can keep this imbalance is the game of the day. Some days, the imbalance tilts toward work. On some, towards home. But I don't think anyone can keep it perfectly balanced. The sooner I accepted this, the more contented I became as a working mom.

There have been days when I've dropped the ball at home foregoing time with baby G. Those are the hard days when I feel guilty and sad that I've had to make this choice. But work-wise, those days were probably the most satisfying. I would've cracked a hard problem or written some miraculous code. The personal fulfilment that comes from that is hard to brush away.

Anyway, you can tell I am caught in the classic dilemma -- to work or not to work. And I don't have any answers yet. But one good thing has come out of my personal Motherhood journey: I truly, really understand the plight of working mothers from the previous generation.

These women, at least in India, were probably judged too harshly for opting to work. No matter how hard they worked in the office, society expected them to put in equal hours at home. If not, they were condemned to the "bad mother" or "bad daughter-in-law" status. So these women would put in 14 hour workdays, commute back home and immediately jump into making fluffy, white idlis for the folks at home. How did they do it? Hats off to them!