Reclaiming your identity: the balance of motherhood, wifehood and self

BEFORE you were a wife or a mother, you were you. You had wild dreams to chase and adventures to go on. You were vivacious, spontaneous and full of energy. Time seemed to pass by slowly. The world was your oyster and there were endless places to explore and people to meet.

- SHAREEZ BAGARIA

And you swore you would never become your mother. Then suddenly it happens. The allure of the doting wife and loving mother engulfs you. Was it truly a choice or years of cultural conditioning?

In many cultures, marriage and motherhood have been seen as a major milestone or the ultimate goal. Women were often raised with the expectation that their primary role in life was to marry and bear children. And to solely and selflessly serve everyone else.

Of recent years, the frustrations of women being reduced to only wives and mothers seem to stem from tensions between identity and expectation, individual desire and societal role. Across cultures, especially in traditional contexts like parts of Indian society, many women feel both the weight of reverence and the burden of limitation in these roles.

Some of these frustrations, emotionally and structurally are:

@ Loss of individual identity: when a woman is only seen as a wife or mother she is expected to be selfless, always placing others first - often at the cost of her own mental and emotional well-being.

@ Social pressure masquerading as “love”: expectations come wrapped in cultural pride: “A woman’ greatest duty is to her family.” If she resists, she is labelled selfish, rebellious, or “not a good woman”.

@ Unpaid and undervalued labour: cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, emotional caregiving — it’s all real work, yet rarely acknowledged as such. There’s no salary, no recognition, often no break and still, women are told they're “lucky” to stay home.