Helping Our Girls Adjust Post Marriage

02/04/2009| IslamWeb

Is it possible for a girl who is pampered by her mother, who considers her the apple of her eye, to be a successful wife? Could she bear the responsibility of taking care of a husband and family?

This question is for every mother who is not keen on gradually and methodically teaching her daughter basic household skills, which later causes her marriage to be a shock for her and a transformation from paradise to a living hell. That is so, because the newlywed girl finds herself suddenly responsible for a house and a husband, without having been instructed back home to do household chores, having never entered the kitchen to prepare a meal, or made her bed or cleaned her wardrobe.

Our advice is to never let your daughter experience this situation, and help guide her as to how to be a skilled housewife. This is particularly applicable when it comes to cooking, which is a difficult art to be mastered, especially after marriage, since not learning it beforehand would leave the husband with a negative first impression, precipitated by disagreements over her cooking and his criticism of it.

Certainly, it is better to avoid this by systemically preparing a girl to assume the responsibilities of marriage from when she is in her family’s house.

Dr. Sihaam ‘Abdul-‘Aal, a wife and mother herself, suggests the basics of this training, from experience:

Women are naturally, psychologically and physiologically suited to the mission of motherhood and marriage. A girl’s preparation should start in a gradual and subtle manner during her early years, to give her a chance to assimilate the skills of housework in several phases:

1-    In her family’s house, before marriage:

I advise every mother to begin including her daughter in household management, by the age of twelve, as this is the age of acquiring skills. The more this program is delayed, the slower the process of learning will be. Further, as a girl grows up and her range of interests widens, this may not appeal to her as she would be occupied with her femininity, beauty and clothing, more than anything else.

Hence, once a girl reaches the preparatory stage, the training program should start during the summer holidays, which usually lasts for roughly three months. In the first year, during these vacations, it is enough to teach your daughter how to make a salad, prepare for breakfast and dinner, and help set the table.

The next year, during holidays, you could show your daughter how to prepare raw materials, like chopping onions, peeling garlic, squeezing tomatoes, cooking rice, and boiling meat and chicken.

During the summer vacations of the third year, it is enough to teach the girl how to cook sautéed and fried vegetables, along with letting her practice what she has previously learned. By the end of this phase, she should be able to prepare a complete meal consisting of rice, vegetables, meat and salad.

When the girl reaches secondary school, she becomes more perceptive to learning how to cook, so we must add to the agenda, tasks we previously refrained from asking her to, due to her young age, such as cooking macaroni and frying vermicelli. As some mothers believe it is wise not to occupy the girl at this stage of her schooling so she may devote herself to achieving her high school diploma, what she learned during the previous years is sufficient.

The training program starts anew during the summer break from university. In this phase, we should teach the girl all the principles of cooking that she does not know. She should now also be able to singlehandedly take care of the house for a whole day every week. This should gradually be increased to more days, until the girl becomes totally experienced in household management.

With regard to a girl who has not received this gradual training in her family’s house, she should undergo an intensive program that will bring her to the level of her counterparts. That is because if she enters the house of her husband without any experience or ability to manage her home, her failure would leave him with a first and lasting impression, no matter how skilled she may become later on.

2-    In the first year of marriage:

Any girl who received the like of the aforementioned training in her family’s house will not find it difficult to manage her new house and bear her marital responsibilities. It will only be the latter that would be an additional new experience during this phase, because of the presence of a husband.

3-    Assuming responsibility of herself, her husband and their baby:

It is at this stage that we fully realize the advantage a girl gains from her long-term training, which enables her to proficiently and easily bear her responsibilities. That, in turn, results in a happy family.

Arab Info Center