Hi Mira,
You obviously know what this is about. I heard what you had to say, got angry, thought I'll sleep over it and see if I'm any less angrier today, but nope, so here.You know what's just as bad as destructive feminism? Pseudo-feminism, and based on your last few statements, you're a champion of exactly that - congratulations.
As someone who isn’t very pro early marriage, or having kids early, or not having a career, so on and so forth, I, a feminist, do not judge you - because that's exactly what feminism taught me. It's not hard for me to understand that different people find happiness in different things, and as far as their situations will allow it, they will make the life choices that make them happiest.
So, had you just said that this is what you choose to do, nobody would question you. But when you say that you're not working because your child is not a puppy that you can see for one hour and leave, you mock all the women who have to or choose to work after becoming mothers. Not cool.
Do you know that there are women who don't have swanky apartments given to them by their husbands to stay home in? That many women have to work to make ends meet, to feed the puppy they get to see for only a couple of hours? Are you aware of single mothers, and how hard they work to balance parenthood with work? It's a pity you don't know such people personally, because if you did, you'd see the kind of effort they put in, and how many of them are phenomenal mothers - despite, and even because of the fact that they have careers. Besides, nothing about just being around guarantees good parenting. People can be good or bad parents regardless of whether they spend four hours in a day with their children or twenty four.
However, if you're too privileged to understand the compulsion to work and earn, I hope you're privileged enough to understand the concept of choice. Every man who chooses to be a parent does not choose to give up on all other passions to be a full time parent - we know that your husband did not. I’m not sure if what you’re saying, then, is that in working after becoming parents, fathers treat their children as puppies? And if that’s not the accusation you dish out to a father, then why to a mother? Let me introduce you to this life-changing concept called equality, or as you like to call it, aggressive feminism. There's still a long way to go, though, and statements such as yours are slowing us down.
Besides, research has often shown that the full-time presence of a parent is not necessary to raise a good child - in fact, it is even possibly beneficial to the child to have working parents. There’s no valid reason parenting and a career have to be exclusive to each other. You are free to be proud of the label of being a homemaker and that of being a mother - you are just not free to put women who choose differently down.
You're new to this world in which anything you say gets noticed and people talk about it, and sometimes what you meant as an offhand comment, or something you said in a completely different context or frame of mind gets blown out of proportion, and people are offended, and it's all just crazier than you ever intended for it to be. I am sorry for that, but unfortunately, if you are a public figure, if you have the slightest capability of influencing public opinion, you can't be relieved of the responsibility of moving things in the right direction. The right direction is not either homemaker or working professional, the right direction is not either stay-at-home mom or working mother - it is the direction of the freedom of choice.
Mira, you may be cited by patriarchs and traditionalists as an example to follow, but thankfully we have other role models to look up to. Kareena Kapoor. Chrissy Teigen. Amal Alamuddin. So many more real life examples around me.
My favourite response to people who kept shaming her for doing anything outside of being a mom #rolemodel
I know you mentioned that people should be free to choose what they want, but when you say something about why would you have a child if you wanted to work, or how your child is not a puppy that you see for an hour and leave, you end up invalidating the choices of all those women who choose differently than you in the same breath. You say vague, oversimplified things like "there should be harmony between the two sexes" - sure, that's what we all want, but how is that harmony achieved? This is the pseudo-feminism we do not need. You want to marry young, have an arranged marriage, sure. You want to have a child immediately, stay holed up for forty days, be a full-time mom, sure. You want to please the patriarchs, sure, you do you, but leave your comments on feminism out of this until you understand what it means.
Perhaps you alone don't deserve such a response for what you said innocently as a result of your own thought process, and not necessarily to insult other women, so this is not a personal attack in any way - it probably won't reach you and it doesn't have to. It needs to reach the people who need to change the way they perceive the choices women make. It needs to reach the women that need more strength and support to make unconventional choices.
I truly wish you marital bliss and every joy that motherhood can bring, but I also truly wish that you will wake up and see that it's two-thousand-frikkin-seventeen and it's stop-being-regressive-o'-clock.
Lots of love to Misha, and I hope she finds a way to grow beyond the gender roles she sees around her.
Yamini