How Will It Affect My Child?

We asked Lina Ashar, Founder of Kangaroo Kids Preschools and Billabong High International Schools, to share her experiences and views on the impact that working mums have on the well-being of their kids...

- Lina Ashar

Isn’t this a case of much ado about nothing? To me, it is. Point out a time to me in the history of humanity when women weren’t working. Incidentally, this takes me to a very interesting case where my nephew attended an interview for admission to Class I. The interviewer asked him, “Is your mom working?” The kid responded in a very matter-of-fact manner, “Yes”. The principal came back with the follow-up question, “And where does she work?” Pat came the answer: “At home”. So, if that six-year-old could understand, why can’t this adult world?

The fact is that everyone—men or women—have been working all through the various stages of social-economic evolution and the factor that changes constantly is ‘where’ they work. And that, according to me, should not be such a bone of contention in times when research has proven that working mothers have a positive impact on their children.

With the emergence of the knowledge-service economy, women found their way out of homes to add that extra buck or, more often than not, express themselves. As the world transited from being an agrarian to an urban society, the ‘working mother’ was looked down upon as someone who was unnecessarily trying to compete with the men. Gradually men as fathers, sons, brothers and then as spouses started to appreciate this superwoman of a human being for doing the impossible— running the household and the office—and with great élan. Across the world, the age-old expectations of women—that of primarily being a mother and only then a social being—loaded on to her unusual expectations of herself.