When a mom posted a query about plastic bottles daily usage but discouraged people from educating her on perils of using plastic bottles – I was like that popular meme that just has a word ‘but’ in it – in my mind voice ‘But… daily consumption is bad for our health (micro-plastics) and future generation’. Obviously no unsolicited advice rule won and I kept my mouth shut.
However, eventually, I spent some time understanding this…
One of the key assumptions when publishing sustainability topics, is that a family is a perfect formula based family.
Scenario1:
And in that family, let us say we publish an article to reduce water bottle usage, guess who does that responsibility fall on?
Moms right? What are the corrective things that can be done?
- Buy reusables, wash them, pack them and bag them, remind family to take them and bring them back and make sure to unpack them in the evening, wash them and put them away. and if any of that process fails, stress and continue to educate family about this
Scenario2:
Let us take another favorite topic on sustainability – Disposable diaper.
To switch to sustainable option – guess who has to work on it? Moms!
And what happens if that mom happened to be single mom with multiple kids, fighting to sustain their life, working for and living on paycheck to paycheck?
Easy answer – ask her to wake-up early and do all of these – because there are so many others who do it right? in the past and in the present and probably in the future and ignoring so many variables and unfair advantage / privilege each of us have.
or another answer is – why become single, stay in a non-working relationship (whatever type it is – even if it is abusive, fix that family dynamics and stay on?) since being a big happy family is a necessity and otherwise be ready to suffer right?
Need more examples?
Cooking fresh food? avoiding take-outs? avoiding packaged foods?
Think of any of the sustainability or healthy topics, the ultimate responsibility and ownership and the mental load and plus getting labeled as ‘nagging, strict, annoying’ for trying to enforce the said topic. Almost all of it will be directed towards moms.
A mom is expected to take care of the child and do all of these tasks in parallel, and go bonkers while at it and be blamed for going bonkers as well (nagging wife, always-loud/shouting-wife, always-cribbing-wife anybody here?). It is a no-win situation – just tailored for moms.
Blind spot
Not to mention our own blind spots. Example: someone would be so passionate about saving plastic and continue to propagate that viewpoint and be belittling someone else for not following their passion-topic, but would probably be completely oblivious to some other core issue.
Easy example: We make yogurt at home, but pandemic hit and everything hit the roof, and had to find balance and re-prioritize and ended up buying curd from store.
Every-time I see the plastic bottle it comes with, I felt guilty – for both usage of plastic and usage of packaged food, but we put our emotional health as priority during that phase.
Now do I have right to judge someone else for using plastic? No, our privileges are different, there are so many variables and life situation that dictate our life choices and sometimes it is not even a choice – which is something we fail to realize every-time we force our agenda on others.
Her frustration made so much sense to me eventually.
I choose to challenge this.
- We do sustainability together and within limit. And if someone in family is unable to follow, I will not worry incessantly about it. It is OFF my mental load.
- I no longer join the sustainability bandwagon with the mindset of guilt-tripping folks who do not practice it and make it a point to teach my child that it is our family rule to do certain things and others may not follow the same rules and that is okay.
- Plus will look for ways to make it implementable for all groups and not just dump the responsibility on moms – and I start that by not probing moms on these topics!