Fwd: Core Responsibilities for the man and woman in a marriage
ambar
From: Mirza Yawar Baig <yawa...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 8:56 PM
Subject: Core Responsibilities for the man and woman in a marriage
To: standard-bea...@googlegroups.com
Core Responsibilities for the man and woman in a marriage
It is essential to differentiate between Core Responsibilities and other things. In my view it is the Core Responsibility of the man to work and earn a living and take care of the financial responsibilities of the family. It is Core Responsibility of the woman to make the home a place of beauty, grace and harmony and to focus on the upbringing of the children. I know this may sound old fashioned to some but just take a look at what the result of the Yuppie and Puppy culture is and you will come back to the basics soon enough. Having taken care of the Core Responsibility, naturally the man must help around the home, take care of children, water the garden, wash the car, mow the lawn, take out the garbage and not sit in front of the TV with his feet propped up and a bowl of popcorn at his elbow – or whatever passes as its equivalent in your culture.
Similarly once the Mom has taken care of her Core Responsibility then it is good if she waters the garden, washes the car, mows the lawn, takes out the garbage and does not sit in front of the TV with her feet propped up and a bowl of popcorn at her elbow – or whatever passes as its equivalent in your culture. I am sure you understand what I mean. Dividing responsibilities is a very good idea. Do it whichever way you like but do it. Role clarity is essential in a happy marriage and role conflict causes the maximum stress on it. It is essential for one of the spouses to be dedicated to the upbringing of children; teaching them life skills, manners, tools of thinking, decision making and teaching them core values of life. Today in the Yuppie and Puppy cultures the idea of bringing up children is to feed them, ensure that they are washed and dried and entertained. That is what you do with the dog. Not with your child.
Children need a jolly sight more than food, clothing and shelter if you want to develop a human being who will be your legacy to the world. I believe you need to dedicate yourself to that because it is important. I’ve met many parents who struggled very hard in the early stages of their lives and who say to themselves (and to everyone else) with great feeling and tears in their eyes, “I will never allow my children to face the hardship that I had to go through.” When I hear this statement I say to them, “Please change the wording. Say, ‘I will never allow my children to build resilience, character and strength. I will never allow them to have the power that I have, to succeed.’ Say this because in effect that is what you are really saying.” For many of them this statement of mine is a shock. They had never thought about their view on upbringing of children in that light. If you protect your child and don’t allow him to enter the fray of life and compete, to get his nose bloody in the struggle, to cry with frustration at his failure in the night and then learn to dry his tears and work out new alternatives; if you allow him or her to come running to you and lend him your shoulder and box of tissues for his tears, then remember you are the worst enemy of the child. You are programming him for failure. You are writing the script to destroy his life and to make a parasite out of him who will never have the respect of the world and will forever live in a state of mediocrity laboring under a battered sense of self-worth which in many cases comes out in the form of aggression and overpowering control on the spouse who is the only one on whom he can vent his spleen. The struggle builds strength. Opposition teaches how to fight in the struggle of life. Difficulty teaches how to win. If there was no Goliath, David would have remained a shepherd boy. Many parents don’t understand this and are the architects of their children’s destruction, tragically with the best of intentions.
Many parents equate expense with quality. They give their children the most expensive education which insulates them from the realities of life and so they never learn to fight the real battles. They give them the most expensive toys which in reality teach them to define human value in terms of material worth (the ‘best’ kids are those who have the best toys). They insulate them from poverty, deprivation, lack of resources and thereby they ‘protect’ them from being exposed to the power of drive, ambition, single minded focus on achieving big, ambitious, scary goals. They build walls between their children and the people who they must in the end, deal with. People who will one day, work in their organizations and decide their fate. People who need to be inspired, led, cared for and supported. And therefore people who must be understood. Not simply in order to do good and be charitable but because the success of the business and family depends on the development of these people; the great multitude. The fond parents forget or ignore the fact that one day the time will come for the soft little molly coddled pussy cat to enter the jungle of the real world without any of the tools it needs to survive, much less to lead others.
They must be supported but not protected. They must be advised but not told what to do. They must be allowed to take their own decisions but not without the benefit of the frame of reference of the value of honor, fairness, responsibility, accountability, nurturing and trusteeship. They must be allowed to feel, to cry in the night for the hardships that others undergo, to build friendships and relationships that span the boundaries of color, race, religion, nationality and much more difficult, social order and prejudice. They must learn that to be poor and to be honorable are not mutually exclusive; just as to be rich and to be honorable are not the same thing and don’t happen automatically. They must learn that virtue is a state of mind. A stance, a decision, a position that one takes, not because someone is watching but because of one’s own sense of one’s identity.
I do because of who I am. And I become, because I do. They must learn that our actions define us. They must learn that people will define them on the basis of both what they owned and what they contributed. But they will honor them only for what they contributed. Because we are remembered, not for what we had but for what we gave. Only when they are taught to focus on contribution from their earliest childhood will they be able to fight the force of consumerism that is focused on consumption. Blind, self-centered consumption that in the end will consume us all, if it is allowed to proliferate unchallenged.
If you don’t agree, use condoms. That is far better than producing children who are a nuisance at best and a painful reality in the lives of others, as long as they live.
Extract from: ‘Marriage, How to keep it off the rocks,’ Mirza Yawar Baig
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