People used to glorify me by saying,
“Oh, beautifully, you are raising your children!”
As if my only identity was “being a mother”.
Any folly, the sane people would say, “Oh, she is destroying the little lives!”
These lines by 47-year-old Sangita Chakraborty capture the shrill, piercing noises of a society that has mastered in condemning, so brutal and tormenting that women abstain from owning their own parenting ways. Their praise appears like a pressure to be caged into the title of ‘ a good mother’.
In retrospect, Sangita, a teacher, goes on to express the beginning of her journey as a young mother. “I had no YouTube, no parenting channel, no AI, nothing. Only sheer instincts, aha moments, depression, hope.”
There are no rutted roads, only roads not taken, when it comes to motherhood. It’s strange that there are very limited connotations when it comes to expressing motherhood. You see posters and posts on mothers around — they are either tied down to domestic chores, or just tagged as nurturing and sacrificing, always available. This reduces a woman’s identity, her passion, her agency, and her mental and physical spaces are eclipsed by the hefty term of motherhood and even heftier duties that are imposed on her. There is no one criterion to fit into the role of a mother, no one script to be followed. While some, under pressure, quietly give in to the rigid definitions, some create their own meanings. Either way, disapprovals are inevitable.
For many women, it has become a struggle to balance motherhood and their personal goals. As K Srilata, a writer, articulates, “It’s a rough ride, and it can leave you frazzled and feeling sometimes like you have not done anything right. But one needs to take a long view of all this.”
A lonely struggle
The conception that a child needs both parents looms so big that women are often forced to be in meaningless marriages. Jyonsna G Kumar, says that her decision to come out of decade-old matrimony was a bold one, even if it came with cascading consequences. She is separated from her parents, too, as they couldn’t accept this decision. “Many women stay in marriage because of myriad fears — taunts from society, of ‘single mother’ label, drifting apart from family — creeping in, restraining them from taking decisions like divorce.” Mothers, a few decades ago, clung on to marriages solely because of their kids, but surprisingly, even today, many women continue to do this.
Motherhood isn’t about sacrificing, but setting a precedent of living one’s own life without being touched by societal judgments. Jyonsna says, “The child doesn’t have to hear stories of suffering in silence but escaping the insufferable situation.” She emphasises such honest conversations with her nine-year-old child are a gateway to a life filled with authority and confidence.
Not everyone is a domestic goddess. Prasitha P, a sales executive, who has been a single mother for the past three decades, says that through the loud chaos of scathing comments, she pushed herself to unapologetically follow her heart. She became a mother when she was a first-year graduate student. She says, “My priority was financial stability, and my entire life was about chasing a good life, and never about doing domestic chores, which came with backlashes from my own family and outside.” Decades ago, when mothers were expected to stay indoors and take care of children, living as a single mother, starting a life afresh, and eking out a living without any support was frowned upon.
Motherhood, she says, was about seeing her daughter grow into a friend. While the journey has been “joyful and rewarding”, she never dismissed her own needs. From the decision to separate herself from her husband to having guilt-free leisure time, Prasitha has been uncompromising and free. “I often go to my friends, be it to have fun or to pour my heart out to them, and sometimes for small trips, and I believe that has been an important ritual.” Leisure time, she likes to describe as down time for herself as balancing her needs and her child’s was a perpetual struggle, and not an escapade from her responsibilities.
One’s own time
Sangita, a mother of two, says that for a very long time, she prioritised her children’s needs above everything else, but with time, it later turned into a journey of prioritising her own needs, growth, and individuality. For Srilata, motherhood has been both difficult and rewarding. She comments, “As a writer and as someone with a full-time day job, I felt the scarcity of time acutely — because being a mother basically means large chunks of time unexpectedly disappear, and you feel as if you have ‘nothing to show’ for it.”
Conversations on the dearth of time for mothers is not a pronounced topic of discussion, probably because that is considered quite normal. As many mothers do, Srilata says, “I have prioritised my children over my writing — many things, many poems and, possibly, an entire novel didn’t get written because of their presence in my life. Do I regret that? Sometimes, I wish I had had more time, yes.” But she also recounts the warmth of her parenting. “Who they are today is its own kind of reward, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything else.” Whenever she could, she never missed a chance of setting aside time for her passion. “I actively worked towards carving out that time, even went on writing residencies.”
While it’s often difficult to carve out time and room of your own, Sanhita Basu Ghose, a dancer, reflects that art is her leisure time. The nagging remarks of her being busy and complaints of not attending to do domestic duties like cooking shadowed her. But what mattered to her was to find time for creation. “To sit on a production, read, dramatise, and conceptualise her work was leisure time for me,” she says, adding that she has a beautiful bond with her daughter, but believes that her identity transcends motherhood.
Leisure time for Sangita is about seeking peace. She says, “I remember spending ‘me time’ by looking after plants, reading Bangla books, and understanding Buddhist philosophy.” While each has their own way of finding time for themselves, what makes it special is that they intentionally orchestrated the space and time.
Darker side
The experience of motherhood, as always, has been glamourised, while the struggles attached are often downplayed. Definitely, the experience is unparalleled. But motherhood can be exhausting with grown up children, but “hope returns infinitely,” Sangita admits. “Heated arguments can reduce you to dust. Motherhood can sometimes feel like a lonely struggle. It’s debatable, but many times it feels like a thankless job,” she adds.
Srilata acknowledges that as kids get older, and the dynamics evolve, parenting evolves, too. Undeniably, it does take an emotional toll. “There have been rough moments. So one of the things I learnt to do was to have open conversations with them whenever I got something wrong, lost my temper with them, or overstepped a boundary. I usually apologise if I feel I have done something I shouldn’t. That makes it easier in the long run,” she says.
Is it unfair that motherhood comes without any warning, without preparing anyone? In Sangita’s words, “None of us were ever really trained to become mothers. One fine morning, motherhood simply arrived — and since then, I have been evolving continuously.”
While she tries to learn, grow, and mother herself in the process, she says,
“I grew.
I broke.
I lifted my head again.
I breathed deeply and continued the journey.”