The Story of Mothers

As she grew, she received more complicated puzzles.  Frustrations when the pieces didn’t fit produced tantrums, but eventually she realised that fitting a puzzle together requires trial and error, concentration and patience.  There would be the ‘whole perfect picture’ to be made if she kept trying and trying. Her eyes sparkled with pride every time she completed a puzzle. 

At five, she asked me a question that changed my life, “Do big people put puzzles together too?”

We certainly do.

Women especially mothers try to make complete puzzle-pictures by fitting together the pieces of our lives.  Just when we solve one puzzle, changes may force us to rearrange some pieces, and the puzzle-picture may become something we have never expected. We juggle our time and energy between various responsibilities, needs and sometimes the ‘wants’, we are constantly putting our life’s jigsaw puzzle together.

Her question led me to ponder how I could continue to fit my life’s pieces together as a single mother. I was working at home as a freelance writer then, having taken the bold step to quit a prestigious international career to be back in Malaysia to give her a steady home life and to be close to family and cultural roots.  My puzzle pieces consisted of livelihood to take care of her and four other family members, household management, and extended family responsibilities. There was little time for friends, hobby, self-care, and ‘thinking about the future’. I had time only to fit the pieces of puzzle for the picture in front of me.

I wrote a piece in a popular newspaper, ‘A Job Only Mothers Can Do’ and inserted my email at the end. The day it was published, 40 Malaysian homemakers with university degrees, emailed me about their own situations. It was 2008. We were the first 2000 people in Malaysia to have email addresses as all of us had returned from working in developed countries.

Our Situation

The energy online was high as we found out that we all wanted to make beautiful puzzle-pictures of our lives. One of the biggest puzzles to solve was how to provide primary care for our children, manage households and still generate income. Instead of working full time outside of the home, they became homemakers, making family care their first priority. Some earned income through freelancing or small home businesses. Most could only take care of children and household. 

Then, a realization came to me — all of us homemakers were called ‘housewives’ even when we were not any one’s wives. We were perceived to be uneducated, job failures, unemployable, or rich ladies-of-leisure.  The misconception that homemakers didn’t contribute to the household or to the economy made staying home an unpopular option, so those of us who chose to stay-at-home to work or do housework were facing prejudice, resulting in low self-esteem. The situation was especially serious for women with university education funded by parents.  Our puzzle-picture was pulling our core being apart!

Then, another realization came: a new work option – working from home – was largely unexplored locally.

But, how could this option be promoted?  Money was needed to move things in this world of puzzles………..!

A fire burned inside me to do something for my daughter so that she would have the freedom  to choose how she wanted to be a woman, a mother, when she is ready.

Then, miracles started to happen, one after another. The idea to hold a conference to disseminate information from those of us who are ‘working@ home’ to others seeking answers was fully appreciated by many. Through email, the cheapest and most efficient way to communicate by mothers at home, a network of multi-racial mothers, “Mothers for Mothers’, was founded.

Sheer determination and high motivation paved way to organise seven “Working From Home” conferences, each with 500 mother attendees, between 1998-99 to give mothers – especially single, disabled and disadvantaged mothers – as much information and encouragement as possible about balancing work and motherhood by working from home.

The organising group had little money and time in the midst of the Asian economic crisis, but lots of energy and vision to better the image of the homemaker.  The conferences were organized as if we were putting a jigsaw puzzle together — each participating mother contributing what she could, and by bartering and making exchanges with businesses. 

Our First Book Project

Facing economic constraints, we could not hold our conferences all over Malaysia for other enthusiastic mothers. The conference speakers compiled a guidebook to disseminate the information.  Its contents were down-to-earth, meant for all mothers and written from mothers’ hearts. Due to our varied time commitments and lack of mobility, we carried out the writing, editing and translating through e-mail.  The whole project was made possible because of our telecommuting ability, the first of its kind in Malaysia then.  We learnt to deal calmly with virus attacks, computer glitches and household chaos at the same time.

The book was published in 2000 in four languages – English, Bahasa Malaysia, Tamil and Chinese. The Canadian International Development agency (CIDA) funded the printing of 20,000 books in four languages. 12000 were distributed to women’s NGOs to disseminate information, the rest were split amongst the writers, and book production team.

The conferences and book project changed us tremendously.  By encouraging more mothers to work from home and be more vocal about our situations, we showed the society that homemakers possess skills and talents that contribute to the economy and household. We also proved to ourselves that mothers can move mountains if we put our minds to what we do.  This is what a modern woman’s life is all about – being resilient, solving problems creatively and being proactive in every aspect of life.

When the local construction sector began to embark the concept ‘SOHO” ( Small office home office), we had completed one big puzzle-picture for all Malaysian women.

We can, if we really think we can! There is no doubt about it!

Our path

The biggest miracle that happened was that the strong voices of critics of homemakers and the ridicules about our adopting computer technologies to suit our lifestyle began to quiet down.  For the first eight years of ‘Mothers for Mothers’ life, we fought to give dignity to homemakers by doing many things we didn’t think we could do such as building a website, and innovating livelihood schemes for the poor through upcycling. 

Although we faced numerous setbacks, a movement for mothers to help mothers to work, was growing.  In 2002, we renamed ourselves ‘eHomemakers’, advocating that the home can be a platform for work, play, socializing and love, and that it is for every woman and man, at any stage of life.

The next fifteen years saw our e-community growing and we won several international awards. The core team faced the usual ups and downs. There have been family deaths, marital breakdowns, health problems, births, celebrations, and personal triumphs.  Some have migrated overseas, some are retired and are enjoying life with hobbies and travelling. A few have passed on.  But we have grown stronger together, providing solutions to help each other and more determined than ever to shape a future for families.

Embarking on telework and e-businesses while making full-time parenthood possible has caught on in Malaysia. Flexiwork and working any where is made possible with technological advancement.  And so, men, fathers and single men, have joined us.

The Third Option

Working full-time outside the home and being a homemaker both have their own challenges.  The same is true about working from home.  The first year of adjustment is the most difficult.  Mothers who have been working full-time outside may find staying home even more stressful because they are not used to the new challenges.  They may give up and go back to full-time work outside.  Likewise, homemakers may quit home-based businesses easily because they aren’t just dealing with homemaking situations, but with business entities.

Working from home means controlling our work, our environment and ourselves.  We become our own bosses.  No one tells us when to start and stop.  It’s all up to us.  What we are willing to do to resolve conflicting demands on our time and resources is just like putting a jigsaw puzzle together.  It can be a dream come true if we manage to fit all the pieces together.  Then we will have the best of both worlds – working and staying home.

Learn more about the option of working from home and read our eBooks!