The Working Mother: Conflicting Roles Of The African Career Woman In An Economically Challenging Environment

One of the major fall-outs of a depressed economy in the Third World is the need placed on women as mothers and bread winners.

In Africa a lot of women have been forced into white and blue collar employment in order to either support their spouses or take full charge for winning the proverbial bread for the family.

Ancient African societies gave women serious roles of taking care of children and their family. Women; though expected to follow their husbands to the farm were also responsible for ensuring that children were fed and properly brought up. African tradition placed a heavy premium on deep cultural practices that bother on respect for older persons.

The dire economic challenges of the nineties however have transformed African societies largely and one area that has suffered is the African social security net.

With the poor economic state of most African states, business ownership has suffered greatly. Many people have had to go into paid employment. The resultant impact is less time for the family in general and children in particular.

How much quality time are we spending with our children? In a recent study i conducted in Lagos, Nigeria i discovered that less than 1% of respondents spend more than 2 hours a day during the week with their children. Respondent here being:

1. Working women with children less than ten years old
2. Respondents have white or blue collar jobs. Majority being in financial services, telecommunication and business consulting
3. All earn minimum N1mm per annum
4. All have been in their present employment for at least one calendar year

A notable characteristic was that these women leave home usually before 7.00am each day and do not return on the average before 8 to 9pm. About 80% of respondents do not spend any quality time with their children during the week because the children are asleep when they are leaving home in the morning and are about going to bed when they return in the evening.

Most agree that they do not spend quality time with their children and try to make up for that during the week end. Quality time here being described as time during the day or night when both mother and child are in the same place and both are awake. However i must point out that our definition does not take cognizance of the fact that even though both are in the same place, they may be doing unrelated things like the mother is in the kitchen and the child is in the sitting room watching television.

However 60% of our respondents still spend less than six hours on week ends with their children.

Take Nike (not real name) for example. She is a thirty two year old mother of a two year old lovely girl. As a banker Nike wakes up at five o’clock in the morning every working day to prepare for work. She wakes her daughter up a little after, bathes and dresses her and they zoom off. She drops her off at a crèche and runs to the office; avoiding early morning traffic.

The young girl stays with the Nanny at the crèche till late at night when she goes to pick her up; after work. Some days Nike does not get to see her daughter until after ten p.m. The young lady would have fallen asleep.

Weekends follow the same pattern because Nike works for a bank that offers Saturday Banking.

She worries about the limited quality time she spends with her daughter but what can she do? She cannot afford to lose her job.

Possible Impact on the children?

Children need to be nurtured. Irrespective of the need they have to self-express and be independent; they still need to be guided and the physical and emotional needs are very key too.

Today in modern day Nigeria, many working and career mothers have relinquished their right and responsibilities to the nanny or the house help.

Children now receive training and guidance from these people who may not be properly trained or have the right mentality for that role.

USA Today published an article in its August 1999 edition asserting those babies are deeply affected by their earliest experiences. The article also encouraged parents to spend time to talk, read, and sing to their children.

It is very difficult if not unimaginable to request women who are too tired after the hustle and bustle of the day to spend time singing to their children.

In her article 'Waiting to grow - the implications of day care centers on child development' (Tikkun, Jan-Feb, 1997) Eleanor Reynolds mentioned the challenges faced by day-care centers in the United States of America in properly bringing up children in their care. She talked about the fact that these centers have too many children for the staff they hire.

It is difficult for children in day-care centers to receive the kind of gentle, undiluted attention required.

Alternative Course of Action

One of the ways of addressing this issue is the creation of a welfare package where working mothers are allowed to stay at home longer than the common practice of three months maternity leave.

Another option is the introduction of a welfare package for working mothers such that they are able to stay off full time employment and earn some money from government.

Improve access to capital for women business owners. It has been discovered that self-employed mothers have more time to care for their young children.

The Future

There is no denying the fact that mothers play a significant role in shaping the behavior of children. We need a society where women can stay with their young children long enough to impact positively on them.

If we do otherwise we are likely to have in future children who grow up with a deep hatred for society and an ignorance of the values of proper family life.

Those are some of the challenge being faced by Western societies; we need not toe the same line.