Dear Sister,

Jazakullah khair for your kind words. I am glad you found it beneficial. Yes, you may translate it to Bengali.

Is someone stopping you from writing such an article?

It really helped put things in perspective.

Mothers are incredible people who do a job that is tremendously difficult and most unappreciated, despite the high honor given to them by Allah and His Prophet (s).

Lets support our mothers! Lets not expect women to be either superwomen (with a full time job and then works full time raising the kids) or subservient women who is expected to sacrifice everything for her family: career, outside interests – including learning about the Deen, personal time, and even friends.

Kind words, gifts such as flowers and chocolate are a good start.

Even better is helping mothers out with child care, and household chores, so they get time out for themselves.

Even better is setting up systems to do so – ie perhaps each community/Mosque can set up a register of Muslim baby-sitters who can be called upon short notice when mom needs a break?

The famous saying is that although mothers are clearly the main influence in a child’s life it actually takes a village. In the past, joint family systems were available to help take the load off of women a bit.

It would be great to hear from other readers what ideas they have to make the lives of mothers easier!

I think – as someone who has both felt the peer pressure to marry and have family, but that it simply did not work out, and am far more successful and useful at this time in my niche profession – the difference between today’s situation and the situation at the time of the first converts is the expectation by and on women. From other articles about those early Muslim women, their lives and choices, it seemed to me they simply chose the best and most useful and godly action available at the time. If they had offers to marry, they chose a husband where this seemed aligned with their deen. If they had children, then they became mothers. When the children grew up, then some of them did charity work and others fought in wars, etc. You get the idea. Today, we look too far into the future which is uncertain. We expect women (and maybe men too) to choose entire life paths today. Mother, OR job? Apply one’s academic training in society, OR indirectly from home? As though it may not have a mix of all at one point or another, as though Allah may not call you to this or that along the way, or not, depending on His will. Yes, time would be taken away from, say, a full career if one has children to focus on for a period of time, but is it really that big a deal, if say 2/3 a career + motherhood are all the best godly options you made for your life? And men too face the same long-term expectations and woe betide them if Allah actually calls a few of them to their best option at a point in time, that doesn’t fit into their cultural expectations.

For both men and women, we really should just be more laidback about when and whether people marry or re-marry, when they are blessed with children or not, what or whether a career is better for them to focus on, and just accept that these are Allah’s qadr. We all already will naturally feel the peer pressure and women will feel the biological clock, there’s no need to intensify these feelings until in perceived desperation many forget to be content with Allah’s will and neglect to listen to Him guiding our lives and then make unwise decisions that make them unhappy and more discontented. I found far more benefit reflecting on the sahaba who married, then were widowed or divorced, re-married, on Prophet’s wives who did not have children until they were older, etc. and throughout all these things that we today consider to be dire and unthinkable calamities, were just so content and ok with it all. I mean, it isn’t easy to get to that station of faith. Isn’t this the attitude and example we should be training our nation to have? Instead of encouraging the opposite direction of competition and desire for ‘life milestones’ for its own sake?