I’ll be the first to fess up that I used to think housewives had the easiest job. I have never been exposed to the life of one. My mom was a working mom and it doesn’t help that TV shows from Desperate Housewives to Real Housewives of New Jersey make housewives out to look like they don’t really do that much with their time but gossip and bicker.

Then my wife quit her job and took the task of taking care of the household and my kid Fighter and I began to see what the job of a housewife is. Now don’t get me wrong, my wife admits that she has it really easy compared to a lot of the other housewives out there because we have hired help. The ones that have it hard are the ones who have to raise kids and literally take care of the household without any hired help.

I think that’s one of the hardest jobs out there and here’s why.

1) You work alone 

We live in a modern working world where teamwork is a norm. We’re often put into teams to achieve things together because there are clear advantages. Team members complement one another’s weaknesses and strengths and can lean on one another in difficult times.

Housewives work alone. If they don’t get the laundry done, nobody gets the laundry done. During the day there’s nobody for them to lean on when they get frustrated with their kids or with the housework or anyone.

2) Work starts when you wake up and ends when you sleep

Mornings start with breakfast for the kids and taking care of them. When you send them off to school you then have a moment of peace but all that is used for housework, marketing and everything else the household needs.

If you finish all that early you might be lucky enough to squeeze in some personal leisure time but it won’t be long before the kids come back from school and you’ve got to play mommy again. Then it’s dinner time and time to spend with your husband when he gets back from work.

The worst part is when at the end of the day you feel really tired and your husband wonders why that’s so when he was the one “at work” all day.

3) You have the hardest boss

And that’s yourself. When something at home is out of order and the husband tells you off, you take it very personally. When a kid of yours falls down under your watch you know that it’s normal and part of growing up but you still blame yourself for not being there to catch him.

Housewives have the hardest boss: themselves. Because the home and family are two very personal things that in their hearts have to be kept perfect. Anything that falls outside of perfect is a disappointment… and we  know how hard it is to get anything at all to be perfect.

4) You have no salary

While most of us work hard all month we’re reminded at the end of every month why we work so hard. That’s on payday when we get our pay. We can then buy something we like or treat ourselves to a good meal.

Housewives have no pay day… nothing to give them any sense of encouragement or a “pat on the back” to say “good job on getting through with this busy month”.

5) It’s lonely

Think of us human beings as those little characters in Sims. We all have our needs. Food, Sleep, Bladder…. and well one important one is social. Our social needs are very often fulfilled at work or in the office when we meet many other colleagues. We joke and exchange news all with face to face interaction with someone else.

Housewives get much less of that. Most of the interaction they get is with their kids which is a good thing but sometimes it just helps to be able to interact face to face with peers. Sometimes at home… it does get lonely.

6) You have no maternity leave

Just delivered a beautiful baby and recovering from your pregnancy? Well while working moms get 2-3 months maternity leave, housewives get none of that. The kids still need to be taken care of and household still needs to be managed.

7) You have no annual leave

You have no annual leave whatsoever. The only time you get to take leave is when your husband decides to go for a family holiday during the school holidays. Even then it’s like a working holiday for you.

8) You don’t often get recognized for your work 

We live in a generation that craves recognition for work that we do. Housewives though have it the hardest. You don’t often get recognized for being a great housewife or a good housewife outside the home. And even at home, the kids think you’re naggy, the husband wonders what you do all day.

———

Much of these points I credit to my wife who helped me open up my eyes to the struggles and sacrifices a housewife makes for her family.

I appreciate much more now the role of housewives even those like my dear wife who have hired help. Maybe it’s time we do something nice for the housewives of our family 🙂

My father used to tell me that there are two types of friend in life. There are true friends. And then there are friends for fun. What we all often struggle with is differentiating between the two. Often we treat our true friends as they are for fun and worse… we treat our “friends for fun” as our true friends only to get disappointed later on.

So I decided to make a list of signs that can help you differentiate between the good and the bad.

For simplicity sake I’m going to refer to a bad friend as a she but this could very well be applied to a he.

1) She always makes you wait.

Time is the most important thing you can give anyone because we all (no matter how rich or poor) have the same amount of time. 24 hours. That’s all. A friend who makes you wait all the time is a friend who doesn’t care very much for the value of your time.

The true friends make sure they never make you wait and if they ever do, they apologize profusely and find a way to make it up to you so you know how much it matters to them.

2) She always cancels or doesn’t show up in the last minute.

In life the older you get the less time you have. It takes a certain level of commitment for any person to block out a slot in his or her schedule to meet up with friends or hang out. An appointment is a promise to meet you. Anyone who breaks that promise at the last minute is a person who doesn’t value you or the promise they make.

Sure you can make exceptions for extraordinary circumstances but the more a person does this the less believable each excuse becomes.

3) She disappears from the radar and makes no attempt to stay in touch with you when she gets a boyfriend.

We’ve all had one of these friends. A friend who would call you out for coffee every Saturday afternoon or for Karaoke or just to hang out. Then when she gets attached she disappears. She doesn’t have time to meet up with you anymore and sometimes doesn’t even reply your messages like she used to. Then when that relationship ends all of a sudden she’s your best friend again.

4) She talks about herself all the time and never asks about you.

Some of us like to talk about ourselves more than others and that’s fine. The bad friends though make everything about themselves. Whatever topic you talk about she will find a way to bring the topic back to her which is fine except that by the end of the meetup you realize she never once asked about you. In some cases even when you do talk to her about a problem you’re facing, she again finds a way to bring it back to herself.

5) She talks bad about you behind your back.

You will hear it either from a friend telling you or even by watching her post a vague status update online that doesn’t name you but you know she’s talking about you.

6) She often talks negatively about other people in front of you.

If you’re not lucky enough to have other people tell you about what she said about you, listen out to her when she talks to you. If she constantly talks bad or complains about other people then there’s a good chance she’s talking bad about you too to someone else.

7) She often asks to borrow money without having ever paid back.

Try not to lend money to a friend but if you have to, watch out to see if she pays you back promptly. If she doesn’t then you know immediately she’s not a good friend. If she does, then there could be something there.

8) She waits for you to pay for all the meals but never once offers to pay.

They say birds of the same feather flock together. That good people attract good people. That is true but it’s not so true when it comes to generosity. Generous people tend to attract freeloaders. Know how to spot them and stay away from them.

———-

I know this all sounds daunting but the good news is that all of us will be lucky enough to meet a number of true friends in our lives. They won’t be perfect and yes maybe sometimes they might commit some of the above too. But you know they’re true friends when they put their heart behind your friendship. Either in making up for mistakes and fights or helping you in the most difficult times of your life. As friends, we too must make the commitment. Friendship is a two way thing.

As a new parent, I often draw comparisons between how my parents brought me up to how I bring up my kid. The more I looked into it the more I notice how different parenting during my parents’ time and my time is. Here’s what’s different:

1) Travel in a car without a baby seat

Today it’s almost a given for us that every baby must have a special car seat at the back to sit in when traveling in the car. And for good reason too. Car seats are safer and protect a child much better if an accident or a collision were to happen. Heck many countries have even made it the law to have a car seat when traveling with a baby.

Compare it to our parents’ time back in the 80s or 90s.There were 4 kids in my family and not one of us had a baby or toddler car seat in the car. We sat in the back seat just like an adult would (heck most of the time even without a seat belt) and if a baby was too small to sit on his own, he sat on the lap of someone older. It was that simple. No special seats for babies. Everyone was equal.

2) Learn to ride a bicycle

During my time, every kid learned how to ride a bicycle. It wasn’t just a useful life-skill. It was a necessity since going out cycling with your neighborhood friends was part of a late afternoon’s fun. The person who taught you was always either your elder brother or your father, with your mother often cheering you on when you succeed.

Today I increasingly see more and more kids grow up without learning how to ride a bicycle. Perhaps habits change. Kids spend these days spend less time on outdoor activities like cycling and more on indoor activities like video games or iPad games.

3) Coloring books or reading story books on the dining table

Speaking of iPad, go into any family restaurant today for dinner and you’re bound to see a kid being entertained by a cartoon playing on an iPad or a smartphone.

Our parents never had the benefit of that technology. Keeping us busy on the dining table then normally just meant coloring books or even just reading story books. Watching cartoons on the iPads while addictive doesn’t do much for personal development.

Coloring books though gave us the chance to walk away from a dining table having feel like we created something. That we added color to what would have otherwise been a very plain picture.

4) Beat us 

If you grew up in Asia in the 80s or earlier, chances are your parents may have beaten you every now and then to discipline you. Today some parents still do use the physical to discipline their kids but it’s becoming less and less because beating your kids to discipline them is seen as a controversial part of parenting now.

A good number of parents disagree with it now and even among those who agree with it want to limit the extent in which they use such force.

5) Allow some level of chaos

I find myself and many new parents my age now to be very overprotective. We’re afraid to let our kids touch dirty things for fear they might put it in their mouth. If someone coughs in public we run away for fear of our kids might get an infection and heck we even worry bringing our kids out for a night walk around the house for fear of getting mosquito bites that might lead to dengue.

That never used to be the case in my parent’s time. They would tell me not to touch dirty things but wouldn’t freak out if I did. They wouldn’t evacuate me from any area within a 5 mile radius if someone coughed. In fact they often felt it was good I built my immune system anyway. We had lots of fun with our nights too. Some of my fondest memories as a 10 year old kid was following my dad out for night rides on his motorbike as we crossed Penang bridge.

———-

Ok an ending note, when it comes to raising a child I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do it. I think we as parents now each have our own ways and we have to believe that we know it best. I don’t think it’s necessary for us to pass on every single memory or experience our parents gave us to our own kids but perhaps we can know the differences and pick and choose.

I may not beat my kids to discipline them…. but I’m pretty sure I would like to teach all of them to learn to ride a bicycle.