OCTOBER 19, 2018:Â Â DAILY OBSERVER
Typically, we know the meaning of career as the part of life that is concerned with employment. From an occupational point of view, it means the sum total of the various jobs you may hold during your lifetime. But these definitions do not fully cover the meaning of career. So, career should be thought in a broader, more life-encompassing way that might be the sum total of decisions that direct our educational, social, economic, political, and spiritual endeavors and reflect our unique personality characteristics and basic life values.
On the other hand, marriage and reproduction through social recognition are inevitable in the life of every human being. This way of life is very much primitive in the human society. During the prehistoric era a significant portion of the people of this world lead wild life. They had to struggle to survive against natural calamities, wild animals. Their main target was to collect food three times in a day and minimum basic shelter. But with the advancement of thoughts and emergence of various civilizations the life style and dimension of multiple demands have changed dramatically.
Since the beginning of Industrial Revolution, the demand and consumption of human being have been getting multidimensional. Still the demand and consumption are expanding day by day with multiple branches. The world has now become a consumer society in a tiny global village.
Once only the male member of a family was the sole earning member. Women would maintain all household works and upbringing of children. But in today’s world movements for women empowerment, female literacy, equal rights have made women more powerful and visible than ever in the field of education, politics, employment and leadership. In today’s world women are now sharing a significant portion of job market and socioeconomic activities.
According to the recent report of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), divorce application rate has increased by 34 per cent in the past seven years. Moreover, the rate of people getting divorced and living separately from their spouses almost doubled over the last decade.In 2007, the crude rate of divorce was 0.65 per one thousand of the population and this increased to 1.15 in 2017 while the rate of separations also rose to 0.65 from 0.25 during the same period.
Marriage registrars, psychologists and gender experts noted financially empowered women opting out of marriages – following mental and physical torture – as reasons for increasing divorces and separations. The experts also noted loss of family bonds and values, polygamy and extra-marital affairs, virtual world, torture for dowry, settling abroad, drug addiction, social media addiction for increasing divorces and separations.
On the other hand, according to census statistics of South Korea released in March, 2018, the number of marriages recorded in 2017 fell 6.1% from the previous year to 264,500, the lowest level since record keeping began in 1970.But it is also part of a growing trend of more young Koreans embracing a single lifestyle, particularly women, who make up the majority of single-person households in Korea, according to government statistics. Less than half of Korean women now believe that marriage is a must. Korea is also currently the world’s fastest-aging developed economy, with a population composed of more elderly people than young people.
Similarly, according to China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs the country is grappling with a profound shift: marriage rates are going down while divorces are rising sharply. The fall in marriage, in part stemming from more than three decades of the one-child birth control policy, is largely driven by a mindset shift on Chinese women’s part. Moreover, one-child policy has led the country to have big gender gaps, as parents often preferred male babies. This means that by 2020, there will be 30 million unmarried men in China. And in 2055, about 15% of men in China won’t be married when they are 50.As the country’s rapid development translates into more and more opportunities, women no longer view marriage as a path to security. They are delaying it for education and career.
As an outcome of such kind of attitude and behavior there has been a negative growth of population in many developed countries like Japan and Germany. Many attractive incentives are not being able to persuade them to marry or taking more children. As a result, the percentage of aged people increasing day by day.
As a byproduct of capitalism, consumerism and careerism a significant portion of men and women are becoming reluctant to marry, upbringing children in order to keep their career, physical beauty and privacy intact. They are preferring girlfriend, live together than to marry and maintain a family. Because making a legal bondage with a man or woman, giving birth and upbringing children seem very tough, full of hassle to them. Because they are careerist, believe in personal freedom, prefer to enjoy life to the fullest irrespective of legal or illegal ways.
In this scenario the definition of success has also changed. During the old and middle ages most of the people would consider success as earning sufficient livelihood, giving birth of as many children as possible and becoming the proud father or mother of many children. But in the postindustrial revolution world the definition of success has become very much critical and relative. Being an owner of luxury house, latest model car, getting accelerated promotion in the job, huge expansion, growth and profit in business, becoming celebrity, personal publicity through social media, making him or herself more attractive physically and many more.
But success in a life may be relative and it may vary in terms of personality, culture, education, religious belief, merit, family background. But as a human being, the meaning of life should be more or less same irrespective of culture, education, wealth, intellect. Life certainly would become meaningful when we raise our children, take care of our parents, live in a joint family, maintain regular communication with our relatives and neighbors.
These circumstances have not been created overnight but gradually. Upbringing a child is really very tough in today’s family life. Once most of the family were joint and there were may people for taking care of a bay. But today most of the people would like to maintain a nucleus family in order to uphold privacy, individualism and to remain free from hassle. Moreover, many families are becoming nucleolus naturally.
Moreover, in the service market the employers have a fear of maternity leave and discourage women employee to having child and availing maternity leave. Even many employers do not recruit women due to maternity live and lower productivity.All the factors are leading many careerist women to become reluctant in getting married and having children.
In this ICT based first world people have become extremely busy. Running after money, wealth, fame, publicity, degrees, career, human being have forgot about the meaning of life, about thyself, about the ultimate destination of life. Only the death can bring an end to this endless journey.Recently an American woman aged 92 killed her own son when she had become sure that her son was going to bring her to the old home. This scenario is not limited in the developed countries. In many developing countries such kind of attitude is growing day by day.
We should keep in mind that no full-fledged development is possible without the participation of both men and women. In this regard we should make a logical balance between career and family life. Without mutual respect, sacrifice, fellow feeling of all concerned this is not possible. Otherwise, if this kind of attitude keeps spreading worldwide then what might be the existence of human being, what might be the social stability, peace, relationship, morality?But we should get rid of such kind of devastating attitude. We should follow the real meaning of life, the path of rationality, not animality.
© Copyright: Reserved by the writer (Noore Alam Siddiqui)
