Baha'i Perspectives

leila September 12th, 2008

When I was in college, I spent an autumn term doing an internship in Washington, D.C. Away from my native California, with its parking-lot highways and taquerias, I felt at once at home, yet in a different world. The dynamism of life — the daily scramble for the metro every morning; the wonder at which I witnessed the swift transition from suffocating humidity to icy snow in mere months; the philosophical discussions I had at nights with fellow interns — made me never want to leave.

One discussion in particular surfaces in my mind every so often.

There we were, the three of us — myself, and two other female interns. One, an American-born Indian, who lamented the dearth of eligible Jain young men, as cultural norms insisted she marry someone of her own faith. She was serious, intellectual, and self-conscious all at the same time. The other, an Albanian who turned heads, was a self-proclaimed party girl who drank like a fish until the wee hours, but somehow managed to arrive at work fresh-faced and perfumed every morning.

We sat there in the cafeteria, eating cold turkey-and-mustard sandwiches and feeling very grown-up in our black blazers and heels. And suddenly, we stumbled upon a topic that, at the juncture of our academic and professional lives, seemed at once distant and imminent: motherhood, and career.

The details of the conversation aren’t important, though truthfully I can’t remember them, but it seemed that we went about it circles and lamented mostly. But once that seed was planted, I found myself unconsciously trying to pick up clues as to how to solve one of the pre-eminent questions of the modern age. I wanted to work, to be sure. But I also knew I wanted three children (though the biological clock hadn’t begun ticking), and if I wanted to stay at home with them until they went off to school at age five, and if I waited until the third was five, and I waited a year between each child, well… the math was dizzying, but I knew it would be a lot of years.

“Oh well,” I thought. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”

***

Fast-forward three years. I’m sitting ensconced on a sturdy blue couch, a pita-feta-tomato sandwich in one hand, pencil in the other, scribbling my thoughts in my weathered workbook, titled “Releasing the Powers of Junior Youth.” The course is one in a series developed by the Ruhi Institute in Colombia and directed at raising the capacity of its participants to conduct community development work inspired by the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith.

The book with which my study circle and I were deeply engrossed that evening was training us to facilitate junior youth groups, for individuals ages eleven to fifteen, also known as the Junior Youth Empowerment Program. Though the material addresses the spiritual and intellectual potential of junior youth, and the societal forces that engulf adolescents today, I noticed with wonderment that it seemed to speak directly to my young adult self, with all its confusion surrounding the seemingly Big Life Decisions thrust before me.

Take the section on dichotomies, and our tendency as humans to compartmentalize the world:

Reality — physical, social, or spiritual — is too vast to be understood in its entirety. It is not unreasonable, then, to break it up in order to understand it in parts. However, whenever this is done without taking into account the wholeness of reality, difficulties arise. Conflicts among people of different races, colors, nationalities, and religions are examples of some of the many problems that can emerge from a fragmented conception of existence. For, the oneness of humanity is real, and its division along racial, ethnic, and national lines a product of the human mind and the result of historical circumstances.

So, conflict, prejudice, and barriers are an aspect of this compartmentalization on a global scale. This is nothing too new, of course; some have been hinting at the idea of race as an artificial social construct, for example, for a little while.

But what if I suggested that, as much as the seemingly pronounced differences among individuals and groups are dichotomies created by humans, so too is the way that many, especially in the industrialized world, look at our overly-committed lives?

If we are not careful and adopt such a fragmented approach to our lives, we can create all kinds of dichotomies that are largely imaginary. Work, leisure, family life, spiritual life, physical health, intellectual pursuits, individual development, collective progress, and so on become pieces that together make up our existence. When we accept such divisions as real, we feel pulled in many directions, trying to respond to what we consider to be the demands of these different facets of life. We are bewildered by apparently conflicting aims…

***
What implications does this have for motherhood and career?  Some humble thoughts to come, in Part II.

Tags: career, motherhood, Ruhi books

• Baha'i Concepts , General Interest , Society
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leila September 25th, 2008

In my last post, I introduced a dilemma that had swum through my mind, periodically, for the last few years: motherhood and career, and how to do both meaningfully.

I brought up the concept of a fragmented mindset, and found the following quotation, selected from the fifth book of the Ruhi Institute series, to be enlightening:

If we are not careful and adopt such a fragmented approach to our lives, we can create all kinds of dichotomies that are largely imaginary. Work, leisure, family life, spiritual life, physical health, intellectual pursuits, individual development, collective progress, and so on become pieces that together make up our existence. When we accept such divisions as real, we feel pulled in many directions, trying to respond to what we consider to be the demands of these different facets of life. We are bewildered by apparently conflicting aims…

It seems, in twenty-first century Western society, that balancing motherhood (rather than parenthood, but that’s another discussion) and career seems to have this awful, groaning, weighty, “How in the world do we solve this awful problem” label attached to it.  I did a simple Google search, and the images I saw more or less fell into two categories: The angelic pregnant woman cradling her blossoming belly, one the one hand; on the other were frantic messages about “surrendering to motherhood” and the like.  But the more I think about living life in an integrated fashion, the less I look at it as achieving a balance, and more as a means by which I might embrace my (future) children and my career as part of one whole.

I admit, it’s difficult for me to assess this charged issue from the perspective of an unmarried young woman whose career has barely sprouted. What I have realized, however, is that an integrated framework of thinking, while far more difficult, is what we as humans must strive for. And as I look at who I want to be, I begin to question why motherhood and career seem to be so mutually exclusive. I question society’s definition of success — wealth, power, prestige — and have started to redefine what success means for me.

As a product of the college-race generation, ever seeking the brand-name university and the impressive degree, it’s difficult for me to un-do years of such socialization. But I wonder if there might be a balance between, on the hand, society’s perception of the mother — an indefatigable chocolate-chip cookie machine who lives to shuttle her children from soccer practice to violin lessons (an exaggeration, but it exists) — and, on the other, the stereotypical absent working mother, who arrives home just in time to tuck her children into bed. Perhaps if we really began to look at parenthood as raising up inherently noble individuals committed to earnestly working toward the betterment of society, and vigilant of their own spiritual growth, these decisions might become a bit less stressful. A future-orientated vision, mindful of creating a just society, might make us — men and women alike — consider parenthood to be less a sacrifice, and more a privilege.

Abdu’l-Baha states:

The purport is this, that to train the character of humankind is one of the weightiest commandments of God, and the influence of such training is the same as that which the sun exerteth over tree and fruit. Children must be most carefully watched over, protected and trained; in such consisteth true parenthood and parental mercy.

***

To be frank, I still don’t have the motherhood-and-career thing fully figured out, and I haven’t even begun to address the imbalanced way with which most societies view women in the context of parenthood.  I have, however, been inspired by the women I’ve known who have done it, with creativity and ingenuity. To be sure, they sacrificed some of those impressive titles, positions, and opportunities.  But it seems that with every sacrifice they made while raising children, greater rewards emerged in their career.

There’s no fixed formula or recipe for being a parent with a career. All I can discern is that sacrifice, a little creativity, and a healthy sense of purpose and perspective are the best we can do to raise up a generation of spiritually-minded children, in a world where a framework for parenthood is still in its infancy.

Tags: career, motherhood, Ruhi books

• General Interest , Society
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