Dilemma

I was caught up in quite a dilemma this weekend.

On the one hand there was my sister who recently got married & moved to another city to live with her husband & his family. Everything is new for her right now...a change of environment, new people, new kinds of interactions with people she hasn't stayed with before. She is obviously swept by the excitement that comes with change. Afterall, we all crave change in our lives from time to time!

On the other hand there were my parents for whom not much has changed with my sister's wedding, except that they know their daughter will now have a world of her own, won't be able to come home whenever they want to see her, and when she visits, it'll be for a few days and her stay won't be like it was when she was growing up in the house or used to come home for vacations while she was in college in Delhi.

This was my sister's first visit home after marriage and there were quite a few instances of friction between her & my parents. For one, my parents want my sister to carry on with her career while she prefers to be a home-maker, atleast for the time being. This is an unsettling thought for my parents. Don't get them wrong - they have complete faith that her in-laws will take good care of her & she'd never be left wanting for anything. But my parents have always brought both of us up with the belief that every girl should be financially independent irrespective of how much her husband earns or how rich a family she marries in to, and should be able to support herself if need be.

I think there's merit to their view. Apart from financial security, a career gives women a great amount of self-esteem and self-confidence. It also leads to a happy relationship as women don't spend their entire day waiting for their husbands to come home and end up fighting because instead of talking to their wives & taking them out, the husbands WILL end up on the internet or watching TV once they're back home from work!

The other incident revolved around name change post marriage. My sister wanted to add her husband's last name to hers while she was filling out her passport renewal form, and though my dad must have seen this coming he wasn't quite prepared for it, and that led to an argument between him & my sister. It was a knee-jerk reaction on my dad's part really. When you've brought up your child with the amount of love & affection that every parent bestows upon their child, it's difficult to suddenly let go! All parents struggle with it at some point of time, and that's something we as kids must understand. It's up to us to make the transition smoother for our parents. When we get married, there's a new world that awaits us. But our parents aren't left with anything new except a sense of loss that the child they nurtured so lovingly all along has moved on.