Family Issue Articles

(The writer intends to compile the series of his articles appearing in this column into a book with some 20 chapters. The recent book with 30 chapters authored by him is titled �Simple Child Psychology� published by the Tabligh Centre of Dar es Salaam Jamaat.)

Men Are the Guardian of Women And Yet���

By Alhaj Mohamed Khalfan, Dar es Salaam.

There is a kind of a culture with some men. They unnecessarily keep reporting their �normal� business or occupational problems occurring outside home to the women in the family, as if to chastise them with anxieties and get pleasure out of it.

Every business or occupation is subject to problems. A situation arises every now and then in the line of normalcy to give a cause for a temporary anxiety and yet, as always, it is taken care of to await the next one to arise. The cycle is a part of the occupational life, outside home, for men who are engaged in earning a living. This part of the men�s life is of no particular responsibility for women at home, as they too have their shares of anxieties in looking after children and taking care of homes. All adult members in a family, males and females, therefore have their respective roles to fulfill and the relevant concern and anxieties to manage.

It is therefore strange that some men should have the habit or indeed a weakness of informing their mother or wife or both of their occupational problems, as each arises in the normal engagement of the occupation, while fully knowing that it is of no direct concern to the women and therefore, there is nothing or little they can do to help in terms of ideas or experience.

Worrisome Scenario

The women may not be aware that such problems are normal with all others too who are engaged in the field of business or other occupation. They also cannot grasp the precise nature of every problem they are informed of. Therefore, the uncertainty of the aspects of varieties of problems whose quantum and effects are unknown to them gives them the fear of a serious and worrisome scenario.

It is very strange however that these very men choose not to let the women share also their joy of the occasion when they have a good news from their business or occupation because to them, it is of no concern to women at home!

There can also be those who would either exaggerate or indeed fake a situation of anxiety to bring forth some sympathy of "bicharo" from the women at however, a dear price of subjecting them unnecessarily to the doses of anxieties. Perhaps this tendency is of a psychiatric nature and its origin needs to be traced.

No other Explanation

Such a person as the head of a family is either unkind by nature or dull-minded by birth or mentally sick by infliction. There can be no other explanation.

On the other hand, there are also those saintly men in the family who are compassionate and sane in such matters. Where a situation which gives a cause for anxiety or disappointment needs to be reported to the family at home, they make a light presentation of the situation in order to lessen the share of anxiety for the women while taking upon themselves the full brunt of it. They offer a brave face to the women even where a situation is serious, because often there is little that women can do on their part to help alleviate the situation. The situation is worsened if women fall sick from anxieties.

Allah swt has placed men as the guardian of women. (Verse 4:34). Men have been created with the nature of wanting to take care of women, provide for them and protect women from harm including physical and mental agony while women have the emotional nature of wanting and needing to feel that they are taken care of and protected by men. It is this respective active and passive roles of one towards the other which fulfills the mutual feel of the �love and compassion� that Allah mentions in the verse 30:32. Therefore, the verse then significantly ends as a challenge for pondering: ���..most surely, there are signs in this (�love and compassion�) for a people who reflect.�

When the Children's 'Aunty' Becomes 'Mom'

By Alhaj Mohamed Khalfan, Dar es salaam.

A person who marries again after the death or divorce of his wife by the first marriage has one valid concern: how will he, as the head of his family with small children, manage to create and maintain a harmonious relation in an environment of mutual affection and trust between the children and their new mother normally known as stepmother.

What must be appreciated is that there is a need for the understanding of the delicate human factors involved, which are natural, and therefore, there arises also the need for an application of vision, psychology, tact and patience on the part of both the parents, jointly and singly, to address the concern.

Firstly, it must be admitted that while the wife may prove herself a perfect substitute to the husband, or perhaps even a better one where the vacancy was caused by a divorce, she will, as for the children, find it some what difficult, however zealous she may be, to fill naturally and fully the vacuum created by the departure of the biological mother. The emotional attachment between the children and their mother begins months before each is born.

Adjustment In Relation

In such challenging circumstances, the husband would be acting in the best interest of his children in particular and his family in general if he assists his wife in assuming the role of the new mother from the very first day of the matrimony by the husband discreetly adjusting his relation with the children in certain aspects of the home life.

An adjustment becomes necessary for a valid reason: With the departure of the biological mother the children, especially the younger ones, tend to get closer to the father, and consequently, the father too is drawn closer to them. The children begin to relish and cling to the exclusive love the father manifests for them. This, of course, is healthy while the children are without a mother.

However, the mistake which is normally committed by the father unknowingly though with the adverse consequence in the form of ripple effects is when he, after the arrival of the new mother, continues to show the personal motherly concern with regard to almost every aspect of the home life of the children, as if nothing has changed after the marriage and the children are still without a mother. The signal the children get is that the present mother is different from what their mother was and that the father trusts the present mother less with regard to the care for the children.

Tact More Refined

The husband therefore rightly needs to make less apparent his sense of concern and protectionism for the children and begin to act as was natural with him when the biological mother was around. The tact has to be even more refined where there is only one child and she is a girl. Her mental barrier against the perceived intrusion between herself and the father and her resistance to the adaptation is naturally great.

It is also ill advised to hold private sessions with the children to the exclusion of the stepmother or repeatedly in her absence to imply to the children that she is not "one of us". However, there can arise occasions, though rare, when such a private lecturing to the children may seem appropriate.

On the contrary, the intended new relation of trust between the children and the new mother should be so cultivated by design by the husband that the children should learn to lean upon the stepmother for protection, defence or intercession when the father happens to be angry at them. The mother should be seen by the children pleading with their father regarding the grant of their requests for anything special like new dresses or sports gear, etc. and perhaps the mother, with a prior agreement with the father, should be seen meeting or offering to meet the cost because he pretended that the intended purchases were costly.

Not Over-stretched

However, this arrangement need not be over-stretched to amount to pampering and weaken the discipline of the children.

Similarly, while it is normal for the parents, as a newly wed-couple, to be accepting invitations to meet the new relatives after the marriage, the children should be included in such engagements so that they do not get away with the feeling that a stranger has appeared in the family to woo their father away from them. They, if they are small, would not understand the sudden new relation with the stepmother and therefore they would not want to forgive her.

It is therefore recommended that the children are made to visit the new mother a few weeks before the marriage and get to know her in advance under the circumstances which are amenable to a start of friendship in the first instance. There can be an exchange of sentimental gifts, the children being encouraged to apply their creative mind for the purpose like personally stitching a handkerchief or drawing and painting on a large piece of paper to earn her compliments.

Small Drawback

There is however a small drawback. The children having started knowing her as Aunty before the marriage may want to continue to call her so after the marriage, and this should change to Mom or Ma.

The mother should be let to lead in organising the observance of death anniversary of the deceased mother to impress the children that she cares and associates with them in their feelings, if there is such a tradition in the family.

There will always be the urgency of achieving the mutual affection and trust before the stepmother begins to bear children of her own. It is of course, a matter of some concern but definitely not disaster if the relation does not warm up from the beginning or quickly. An agreeable adaptation however does set in later as the children grow up and accept the situation as normal after knowing of similar examples in other families too.

("Men and Women are Poles Apart" was an article by the same author in this column in the last issue, that is, of August 20001 of federation samachar . Editor)

�...... When Privileged to Grow Old

By Mohamed Khalfan, Dar es Salaam.

When the father gets old, older and still older there comes a time when he is perceived in the family as a person who is also getting to be different and more different from what he was.as if he is a new person with however the same face. This is more evident if he is a widower past seventy and feels lonely and dependent at home.

This is the time then for the family to get to know this new person even better in order to get closer to him and to respect and serve him well. He is the father, the same father as he always was, after all, and that is all that matters to the family.

His sense of concern and anxiety for the well being of the family even with regard to small matters is sharpened. However, when it comes to his own personal comfort his concern is now even more pronounced.

The biological aging has its physiological and psychological effects on the behaviour of a person. The older the person grows the more prominent are the effects. The symptoms are normal in the case of the majority of aged persons, and yet they are lucky because growing old is a privilege denied to many.

It is believed that with the thickening of the blood vessels in the process of advanced aging, the constrained supply of blood (oxygen) to the brain dims the mental alertness to a level, which is scaring to those who were mentally sharp during their active life. It is mainly this, which is the reason for the slide in the self-confidence. The degrees in the slide vary.

With the self-confidence gone, the personal situation becomes aggravated when the old person additionally finds himself also dependent for his mobility or movement because of the failing vision and hearing and weak limbs along with perhaps a certain illness or more - for which there is no cure, and therefore, has to be endured to the end. The dependence for the upkeep and pocket expenses is even worse. Dress and personal appearance therefore become less important; survival through a maze of dependence is.

With all these anxieties characterised by dependence and lack of self-confidence, the aged persons strangely derive a sense of security, however false, in clinging to a daily routine of life, which he has grown used to and befriended with.

The feeling is that if they went through the life of dependence and uncertainties unharmed last month, and continue to scrap through safely the current month, they will feel safe and secured if they continue with the same routine undisturbed the following months, as they see themselves living and surviving from month to month.

The following experiences, which are not uncommon, offer an insight to the behaviour as a few examples:

I took copies of Islamic magazines in Gujarati to an old person past eighty who anxiously asked me if I had received my last electricity bill from the mail, because his family had not received theirs though it should have arrived a day before and paid for the next day.

When I was about to depart after a few minutes, he pointed out to me an electric night lamp, which he would switch on at night. He said that he needed it on while he was asleep! He kept a yellow coloured bulb as a spare for the lamp in the event of the need arising for replacement at night.

I thought that he would gladly do without light at his dinner once or twice but not without the night lamp with the coloured bulb...yellow, to be precise... even for a single night! He derived a sense security in the nightly routine of the use of a lamp for secured sleep and the supply of electricity was indeed important.

Fumigation needed to be carried out when pests began to appear crawling at night. For the fumigation to be effective, the entire premises have to be covered in one operation. The old grandfather in the family, however, warned that he would not abandon his "fortress" (bedroom). To him fumigation was not as important as the satisfaction in his sense of security derived from the continuity of his daily life routine! Fumigation was no part of it!

No wonder that there would also be a resistance to shifting from a small room to one which is more ventilated and convenient for an old person and yet no valid reason for refusal can be given because the person himself cannot even comprehend the reason for his obstinacy. This is strangely more common with those who are otherwise intelligent by their standard!

For those in the family who fail or are slow in appreciating and sympathising with the behaviour of the aged persons in the family especially those aged persons who are single, then let the Qur'anic exhortation prevail: not a sound of Ooff! comes out from the lips with disrespect to them, if the family lacks the tact of persuasion; for they too will most likely be no different when they too are privileged to grow very old.

Perhaps very few of us realise that the most productive period of this earthly life in terms of gaining the spiritual reward in the Hereafter is the old age during which a constant declaration of patience and gratefulness (sabran wa shuqran) to Allah for the old age and all the helplessness, illnesses and bereavement of the dear ones that go with it is pleasing to Allah swt. But then the blessed opportunity is soured instead by a constant declaration of a string of complaints to the fellow mortals.

(In the last issue, the author of the Family series wrote on

"....And When Aunty Becomes Mom")

federation samachar 101 June 2002

When Meals Become A Drab of Eating

By Mohamed Khalfan, Dar es Salaam.

There are "things" which we may think as small because we do not know that they in fact matter in a big way. One of such things is how a family at home have their meals.

The following scenarios are not uncommon:

The father and sons sit for meals together, leaving the female members to have theirs separately. Most likely, this arrangement is brought about to facilitate the male members to talk family shop or business over the meals.

Another example is where the entire family have meals together, but the worst part is that the male members monopolise the talk which is again often on the family business apart from other male talks like sports.

Intimidation

The female members are therefore "gagged" into a "disciplined" silence in front of the "bosses". The intimidation to the females may even extend to a point that asking for a dish to be passed would be a rude disturbance to the males� talk and, therefore, a breach of good manners at the dining table.

And yet there is even a worst scenario. Meals are served two or three times separately, depending upon the unpredictable timings of those who are individually present and "ready" for meals. The arrangement has a semblance of a restaurant planted at home. The difference is that there are no bills.

We cannot deny that ordinarily meals taste better where there is a company. We tend to over-eat at a nyaz-khani in Imambara when we are in a company. What can be a better company than one's own family.

Ne�mat

In fact feeding means food, which is a necessity of life. The daily engagement is gratifying. To do so with family is a particular enjoyment. It is a �ne�mat� which is taken for granted.

Don't we keep our table spread with special dishes set out to await the arrival of our dear and near ones from a distant country as a part of the tradition of receiving them from abroad? They may not be hungry! But the dishes do not go waste!

Meals are often the only reason when the family are together and can pass on dishes to one another in a display of mutual affection.

I had a personal experience of how gainful it is to have meals together. A long company with an obstinate malarial fever and the consequent weakness robbed me of my appetite. Meals would go back from the bed either untouched or little consumed.

I needed to feed myself if I were to regain strength and begin to move about. I needed an incentive for this. I decided to be assisted to the dining table and join the family for meals. It worked!

To certain tribes in East Africa, it is almost �religious� to relish meals together from one large common platter (thaal) in complete silence. Perhaps any among them who engaged in talking meant less morsels for him.

Remorse

The remorse for having lost the most enjoyable daily moments of partaking meals together in the family is felt after the head of the family has grown old and himself needs a company over meals when the children also will have grown up and left either for higher studies or emigrated abroad or married away or established their own separate homes.

The question is of priorities. Does not family come first before shop and business? The shop or business eventually parts when the head of the family grows old but the family does not part with him.

There comes a time when rushing in for meals and out again to business becomes a matter of the past in the later part of the life. However, the memory of the past haunts. If only the past could be relived this time with wisdom, that is, as a wise person who appreciated thankfully what was cooked and served and remembered what were the meals the day before.

Make Housewife Aware�. How Busy A Work-place Can Be

By Alhaj Mohamed Khalfan, Dar es Salaam.

When questioned the husband apologetically admits to the wife upon his return from the work-place that he entirely forgot to send someone on an errand which she had requested him to do.

He would not however point out in defense that he was more pressed with the amount of work that day. He knew the wife would argue by reminding him that she too remained under the pressure of the house chores and children-care - including Sundays !

He would not also point out that the work assigned by her was not that important that could not wait for the next day. If he did, he would lose the argument in the debate as to whose work was more important - hers or his! Could he go on working with the empty stomach - just to face only one example in her argument!

Such scenarios and the pattern of dialogue are not uncommon where the wife is a housewife who is only focused on the housewifery. Her home is her small but important world and she perceives the house-chores as the real challenge in life.

A great majority of the families in our community have housewives. They are wrapped up in their own small world, otherwise called "home" which is her domain while unaware of the challenges and problems faced by the head of the family in the daily occupation of making out a living for the family. They are not aware that the pressure of work at the work-place descends in waves with unpredictable quantum and with it there is the mental stress which has its toll. W

The faint idea, which a housewife has about the pressure of work a male member in the family bears, is what she perceives on the surface when she visits shops. What she finds there is an easy occupation for men, leisurely selling items and collecting money. She takes that as a normal example of occupation believing that it prevails everywhere including the offices.

A housewife while quite experienced in her rounds of shopping would not be aware that even behind the shop there is an office frantically busy with a catalogue of office work like compliance of trade regulations and taxation, assessing fluctuating financial liquidity position, banking work, ordering of goods to replenish the stock, queries from the accountant, auditors or tax departments, disputes over deliveries or quality of goods, etc.

A housewife is not aware that in commercial and industrial offices, the "normal" pressure of work is even greater, especially where the place of work is short of staff.

It is therefore the duty of the husband or the head of the family to acquaint the housewife in the family with the normalcy of the nature and pressure of work at the work place.

This information will enable the housewife to establish priorities. She would know when it is not necessary to get what household errand to be handled by the husband. She will learn to manage most of the errands and work on her own without inconveniencing the husband at his work-place.

The improvement will be remarkable. The wife will prove herself more dependable, and therefore seen more lovable. The daughters in the family will copy the example of the mother when they get married and assume the household responsibility with fair degrees of self-reliance.

Let us remember that wife is what the husband makes her. The exercise has however to begin much early after the marriage.

Behind the organized old Husband is the exhausted Wife.

Let Wife Play also Mother to Husband

- When both Are Aged and Lonely.

By Alhaj Muhammed Khalfan, Dar es Salaam.

"You keep dominating! I do not need to be told what time of the day to take bath and what dress to put on! I am not a child! I am a grandfather" After a pause, the husband added softly: "You were not like that before". This was a retort from the husband to his wife, both advanced in age.

A few weeks back there was a similar outburst from the husband when he could not find his old pair of shoes. The wife had thrown them away because they were worn out and a disgrace in public even though they were very comfortable to him.

The wife, now a grandmother, was not like that before. If that fact was pondered upon, the husband would have found that the wife was behaving normally and therefore naturally as she grew older.

It is common to find that a wife who was not dominating on her husband by her nature when she was a young mother did play her domineering role of motherhood, like all mothers do, on her children, instructing them on the "dos" and "don�ts".

However, as no womanhood is complete without motherhood, the wife wants to continue to play a mother. Therefore, when the children are grown up and separated from the parents to establish their own homes, in the same city or elsewhere, the wife is found to continue playing the role of a mother, and the husband tends to become a substitute for the children as her maternal beneficiary.

It is not surprising to see that the wife's concern for the well being of the husband is now more motherly. She would tuck in the husband comfortably well if he was careless with the blanket or mosquito net covering when he retired to bed.

It is therefore inconsiderate on the part of the husband if he rejected or rebelled against the overtures of the wife who was assuming also the kindness and concern of a mother.

A couple growing old and now on their own with the parental obligations fulfilled need even a better mutual understanding than before for a complemented emotional support.

The support from the aged wife in the house is even more important. Let her transfer her motherly attention and concern from the children, now no more under her care, to the aged husband. To interpret the motherly overtures as domination is a short sight. Behind every old but organized husband is likely to be the exhausted wife.