Covid Awareness

Addressing the Struggles and Anxieties of Housewives in the Pandemic Situation

The quarantine period has taken a toll on all of us. It is defined by being restricted to homes. The prolonged lockdown is leaving everyone around in huge distress. The uncertainty about things going back to their normal routines is making people feel more anxious and threatened that they’ve ever been. The indirect sufferers of this situation are housewives.

The space that belonged to a housewife earlier has now been replaced. Her working hours have doubled and she has no domestic help. She is expected to work more and cater to the needs of the family members who are supposed to be ‘working from home’. It then becomes crucial to address the problems of the one who has been working for home, from the home since forever.

Women’s independence is a silent victim that emerges out in a pandemic situation. It is the housewives who are on the verge of breaking down. It has been found out that housewives who used to undergo therapy earlier are now seeking it more often than before. As a family, one must realise that we all had our schedules and plans to be followed before the coronavirus crisis. All of those operations have now been dismantled for not only the ones working outside the home but also for the ones working inside the home. We have to come up altogether and take care of ourselves and our loved ones.

There are some steps for that can be followed for helping a woman or by a woman to manage her anxiety –

1. Coming together as a family - Managing daily chores of the household and child-care responsibilities is something that is supposed to be taken care of only by a housewife. She is seen as a caregiver who never fails to take care of the household by herself. However, now, with the absence of domestic help, it becomes the sheer responsibility of each and every family member to contribute to the chores and responsibilities of the house.
2. Take out your leisure time – Amidst of catering to the needs of the family members, it is important for you to take out time for yourself and do all the things that you love doing. It could be catching up on a book or movie that you were planning to do for so long or learning something new that you always wanted to.
3. Find your own coping mechanism – What makes you happy is something that you know the most well about. Go on a hunt of what keeps you sane and use that as a way to cope up with the distress that might come your way.
4. Physical Exercise – The benefits of exercising are unending. Any sort of physical workout releases a hormone called ‘Endorphin’ which boosts up your mood and calms the mind and enhances the well-being of a person.
5. Realising your personhood - If you are a homemaker, you should never let your identity fade away. Address your intellectual needs and make sure you have access to all the activities. Don’t let your negative thoughts surround you. Be proud of who you are and own yourself.

As a sustainable and growing society, we need to look out for homemakers – be it your sister, your mother, your wife, or your friend. It is important to make them realise the importance of their personhood. Let us try to not make them go through a crisis (existential or emotional) when we all together are already surrounded by a virus crisis.