Why are women so often expected to hold families together?

This article is authored by Pallavi Gopinath Aney, partner and member, A&O Shearman and author – ‘A Good Family’.

There is a particular compliment that women have heard over and over again for generations – ‘you hold the family together.’ Which is amazing, but keeping everyone connected and engaged can involve an extraordinary amount of invisible work.

Gender equality (Pixabay)

Remembering birthdays. Calling relatives. Knowing who is upset with whom. Telling someone their wishes can’t be accommodated. Checking in on family members. Remembering birthdays, anniversaries and festivals. Organising celebrations. Noting down medical histories and dietary requirements. Smoothing over disagreements. Remembering to put together envelopes of cash gifts for household staff at Diwali or Christmas. Making a note that someone really liked a particular kind of chocolate or a saree and that it would be nice to buy them that as a gift.

None of these things necessarily appears on an express list of responsibilities. Its usually a list a woman carries in her head or in her iPhone notes app! Yet, someone must do them. And very often, that someone is a woman.

The compliment that you hold the family together is almost always meant with affection. But I have often wondered what is really being said in that compliment.

We rarely say that a man “holds the family together” in quite the same way. A man is often described as the provider, a good father, a good son, a decent person, the decision-maker, or the head of the family – but rarely as social or familial glue.

For many women, training to be considerate begins in childhood. Girls of my generation were often encouraged to be considerate. To “help out” when guests visited their home. To notice when somebody is uncomfortable. To adjust. To understand what is expected without needing to be told.

These are not bad qualities. In fact, empathy and consideration are among the qualities that allow families and communities to function. Consideration is a virtue; selflessness, unfortunately in this context, is not.

A girl who is praised for being “mature” and “mummy’s little helper’ may gradually learn that this means an inability to simply say “no, sorry, I am busy that day” or simply “could we plan this for another weekend?”. A daughter who is appreciated for never creating trouble may learn that being easy to live with is more valuable than expressing disagreement. Because disagreement is painful and comes with the judgement of being selfish or uncaring.

Ironically, being the competent one or the “sorted” one can make invisible labour even more invisible. If you are the person who knows how much of what needs to be stocked in the fridge, you will invariably find yourself ordering it, even if you’ve managed to outsource the actual cooking and cleaning! If you always remember, there is very little incentive for other people to even try and remember.

If you always organise, organisation becomes your special “talent”.

If you always resolve conflict, people begin to assume that you relish resolving conflict.

The lives of Indian women have changed enormously. Women today acquire multiple degrees and professional qualifications, perform intense jobs as surgeons, lawyers, accountants, launch successful start-ups, build businesses, make independent financial decisions and increasingly expect to have a say in the shape of their own lives.

But changes in women's public lives do not always translate into an equal redistribution of responsibility within the family.

A woman can have a demanding career and still be expected to remain the emotional anchor of the household. She can be ambitious, but with the unwritten understanding that this ambition must not inconvenience others or be too obvious or unfeminine.

She can be independent, provided independence does not cause family relationships to fray. She can build a successful career, but questions about how she will balance it with family responsibilities often remain directed more towards her than towards the men around her. Men get complimented for having photos of their families on their office desks; women get told “oh, you must miss them”.

The result is a possibly unintended double standard. We have changed the definition of what women can do without always accepting that there are things they can choose not to do – and that is a perfectly acceptable choice.

Every family requires compromise. The question, however, is not whether we should compromise, but rather who is expected to do it and when.

For generations, women have been expected to adjust around careers, marriages, geographical moves, children and ageing parents. And in my generation, many have solved the problem by being financially able to hire help to reduce their physical work load – but you can’t usually hire people to make emotional compromises for you. Compromises can of course be freely chosen and deeply meaningful. But they become problematic when they are assumed and expected. There is a big difference between “I would love to reach out to everyone and collect pictures for your fiftieth birthday photobook” and “I barely know this cousin or her friends, why am I giving up my three hours of free time on the weekend to write to a lot of strangers…”.

There is a big difference between choosing to make a sacrifice for someone you love and not being given a choice in the matter – the difference between a freely given gift and a burden.

That distinction can be difficult to see from within a family because expectations often arrive disguised as common sense.

“It’s just the way how things are, beta.”

“You understand the situation, no?”

“You are so practical, you will get it done.”

“Of course you can manage.”

“Everyone listens to you dear. With us, they will just argue.”

“You remember Arya really wants AirPods Pro Max for his birthday, na?”

Each statement sounds harmless.

Together, they create deep responsibility and a role that is very difficult to simply abdicate. A housekeeping role that is simply invisible – not accompanied by the sound of a vacuum cleaner or washing machine.

Some of these expectations are ironically the most robust as between women.

A mother who has spent her life adjusting may find it difficult to understand, or even resent, a daughter who refuses to do the same. Not necessarily because she wants her daughter to have fewer choices, but because compromise may be the language through which she herself learnt to define her own importance within a family unit and to the world at large

This is where generational conversations about women become complicated. A grandmother may see sacrifice as strength and her granddaughter may see it as a thankless task. A mother may believe that keeping the family together requires putting personal needs aside, but her daughter may feel that a family should not be so delicate that it cannot survive individual members having needs of their own.

This may be the most uncomfortable question of all.

What happens when the woman who always remembers stops remembering? When the person who mediates every disagreement refuses to step in?

When the daughter who is always available has other commitments? And, if that commitment isn’t another family obligation but rather a yoga class?

It can initially look like selfishness. But sometimes what looks like selfishness is simply a boundary that was established for survival and sanity late in life.

But perhaps that disruption, when it does arrive, is necessary?

None of this means that women should stop caring about their families. Care can be one of the most meaningful parts of being human. Looking after family members can be an expression of love; organising birthdays can be fun and rewarding; remembering who likes rajma more than chola or who likes to eat dinner at 6pm can be affection. Reminding someone that they have a health check-up due can be an act of pure love. But care does become healthier when it is shared. These questions about women, family and expectation are also part of the territory I explore in A Good Family. Fiction allows us to freely delve into family relationships from the inside—to evaluate people’s motivations and expectations and resentments in a way that is rarely possible in real life.

What interests me most is that these expectations are rarely simple.

Parents can want the best for their children and still misunderstand what “the best” means. A daughter may be unable to speak up for fear of disappointing her parents and having failed them. A sister may silently sacrifice her own interests to be the good sibling, the source of strength for others.

Families can certainly change, but they do not change all at once. And perhaps the real measure of a family's strength is that a woman can simply say “no” and that can pass unquestioned. After all, anyone can go online and buy little Arya his earphones.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Pallavi Gopinath Aney, partner and member, A&O Shearman and author – ‘A Good Family’.