My train of thought came to a sudden when a 5 years old boy fall while playing and ran straight to his maid instead of his mother.
It happened last week when I was at a birthday party of a boy. It was his 5th birthday but as he belongs to a higher class family therefore the adornment shows the picture of a wedding. Many fascinating elite class families were there with their kids, the whole party was an extravagance that met my eyes never before. I walked through the magnificent huge copper gates, and the lights dazzle me at all.
I was just surprised to see a few of young girls, aged 10 to 15, and wearing such obvious clothes making them different to others. A bunch of baby boys playing castle jumping near them. Soon I realized each of girls matches to a kid both in number and jocundity. My host disclosed to me that the girls were the ‘maids’ of the invited kids and were responsible for their care.
I not capable to overcome the disjointing nervousness, so I held onto my son’s hand and hastily made my way to the aristocratically decorated guest sitting room whose air was filled with the perfume of expensive colognes worn by ‘mums’. The top most fashion designers made hand bags, clothes and high heels along with newly manicured glowing nails and many hours spending makeup were all enlarging the cheerfulness of the atmosphere. This was all plainly different to the casual kids’ birthday parties I had ever attended even in abroad where even the richest of parents would usually be dressed up in casual clothes and flip-flops ready to spend the whole day in the playing with the kids.
After a long, quite boring (for me) and meaningless discussion about the latest fashions and styles and chalking out the new plans for the next coming party, it was time to talk about the children which immediately led to the discussion about their primary care givers – the maids.
While a few mothers showing off about having found the perfect maid, most of them looks quite angry with the ‘lazy bones’ they had to pact with every day. I contingent, from what I listened, that the ratio of the number of maids to the kids in a family should not be less than one for a single child and an efficient maid was one who could accommodate to all the needs of a child – feeding, bathing, playing, toileting with least input from the mothers.
Feeling a little left out, I again hold my son’s hand and bring him outside to join the kids who were busy in playing. While standing over there, I noticed the group of maids, energetically talking about a whole heap of teenage year’s issues, from body figure to boyfriends, unwiring of the toddlers they were lifting, who were all ears. While I highly praised their fluency in Urdu and information of a few interspersed words of English, most of them showed a complete lack of basic etiquettes.
However, to my extreme surprise, one of them seems familiar with the notion of ‘naughty corner’ although she was not capable to implement it on this mischievous child who was too sure of his advantage to her and therefore, totally snubbed to follow the command. For the rest of the evening, I saw these maids feeding the kids, changing the diapers and rocking the children while mothers remain immersed with discussing the likely outcome of a soap opera and the caloric count of the sumptuous food before them.
It was my 1st time to come across with such procrastination.
Just then, I felt an unexpected cringe and a strapping sense of inferiority as I marked a Siamese cat, close to the outside door warmer, licking her four kittens while they all suckled at her. The superlative creation of God was proving itself, yet again, to be the only mammal who would hand over the care of its progeny to someone else, that too so clearly unable and inadequate for the role.
It was heart ripping to see that a responsibility that required initial help and CPR skills, a scrupulous trained police ensure and certificate in early childhood education at abroad, but at here in Pakistan it’s assigned to immature non-educated girls who were barely able of looking after themselves. This obviously in itself was a form of chivalrous child abuse. The best phase of a child’s brain growth, the significant time for the gaining of language, etiquettes and basic life expertise all seemed at stake to me.
Babies are born with a native faith for the initially care giver and the objective of early childhood is to make stronger this connection of trust through close interaction and joint play. The worth of this connection has a deep impact upon inter personal relationships, ability to trust, and confidence and stress management afterward in life. Many of parents who move violently to condense the child-parent gap when faced with a disobedient teenager are the ones who unintentionally created it during early childhood.
My train of thought came to a sudden when a 5 years old boy fall while playing and ran straight to his maid instead of his mother for comfort, it was an ordinary scene but for me, it was demonstration of an exceptionally curious behavior suggesting a relation lack of trust in a mother and confusion in role identification. In a state of absolute disbelief, I just take a seat in a corner. As I sat there, I noticed a mother saying to another,
“We are only bearing in mind Atchison College for our boy, as we don’t want him to mix up with the lower class, you know.”
Few steps away a child sitting in the lap of his maid trying to eat a fresh cream cake from her plate with his both hands, and it was a son of that lady talking about Atchison College, instantly
A mocking smile crept up on my face. Oh the irony…
