Responsibilities in a family

Tuesday, September 22, 2015 Jes Myself , Thoughts 4 Comments

I recently attended a course mate's wedding and I was glad to meet some of them again. We don't really meet up that often and only during weddings which occur around twice a year. There was this guy I have not seen for other weddings so naturally I talked to him longer.

Lifelong commitment

He brought his wife, who we also know well as she was also in engineering, just not in our course. I was keen to talk to his wife too because we do know each other during engineering camp but all the while throughout the wedding, she was carrying her 15 months old baby and looked busy keeping her baby entertained. She walked around to stop her baby from crying, carried her here and there and then trying to make her fall asleep.  Even when the couple came and left the venue, the baby was solidly in the mother's arms.

She was so busy while his husband, my course mate sat with us the whole time chatting and eating and never tended to the baby even once. I felt that the wife could do with some assistance when I saw the wife struggling to eat, so I asked my course mate, "Don't you need to help out?" He replied,"She only works part time."

HUH?!!

That is not an answer. It doesn't matter if she is a stay-at-home mum or a working mum, I just thought she and your baby deserved some attention from you. I am not going to judge your responsibilities or your marriage but she needed to eat and it would be good that you carried the baby once these 3 hours.

It doesn't mean that she works part time so the responsibility of the baby is all hers, I can't believe that was the answer I got. I mean, I am not totally surprised by his behaviour but I honestly expected he would reply that the baby can only sleep in her mum's arms or something like that.

I did not think that men of my age would still be so egotistical and separate roles like in the past but I guess I was wrong. There will always be such families and who am I to judge. They could be happy and I should not project my own criteria of happiness onto others. However, I did come from such family whereby my mum had to do all housework even though she worked full time and rarely had free time of her own.

It used to make me resentful of my dad but I came to know that it's their mutual arrangement and used to be the norm during that generation. I tried to help out with the housework most time but I still did not think it was fair that the men could just relax after work even though the wife is also bringing home the dough. My mum complained but she still did her part. We are still a happy and cohesive family. I did not blame my dad or my mum, but the society in general and this makes me clear that I will not want that to happen in my own marriage.

After which, I did not continue to probe my course mate as I know I might not know them well enough. Silently, I really hope he would just help out once in a while.