*From & To Sathish* - Thread 4 - Page 146

I believe at the heart of every family unit is the mother. A child emotionally thrives when he or she is raised by a happy mother. The child may have the best of clothes, best of grandparents, best schooling and even the biggest home to live in, but a child feels emotionally empty inside when his mother feels empty too. I know people who have been raised brilliantly by their grandparents, but they are forever wondering why their mother never gave them that same kind of love and attention.

It is not essential that the mother needs to be a "perfect" woman, but it is vital that she is happy. Her mental well-being matters a lot when raising a child.

A woman is happy within her family unit when her choices are respected and her opinions matter.

In our ancient patriarchal society, you can see how this went against a woman's true sense of self-worth. Her needs were kept at the bottom of the family chain until her son got married.

(This was why giving birth to a son raised her respect in society. Giving birth to a son meant that she would eventually be the family's future "matriarch". This was a power of position equivalent to being the First Lady of her family.) Of course, she has had to work all her life to earn that position of respect. And by the time she got it, she would command such respect with full authority and years of experience behind her. However, as she grew older and her health deteriorated, she had little choice but to be dependent on her son's family to look after her until she died. Her emotional health once again declined as her freedom of choice was deprived from her.

Things have changed a lot since then. Today, a lot of women belong to the working class. She has the freedom to make choice and she is bold enough to let people know her opinions matter. This has changed the family structure tremendously.

When the older generation treat the daughter-in-law like shit in her newly married years, she is not one to take the suffering silently anymore. Rather, she knows that when her time comes, she will strike back like a vulture. Until then, she decides to remain the coy and sweet bride.

She knows her in-laws will be dependant on her as they get older, and she knows how to change that position of power in her stride. Basically, if elderly parents want to be well-looked after by their son's family in their old age, they need to respect the daughter-in-law and her freedom of choice. It is her call if she wants to be in a nuclear family or in a joint family. She can make peace with everyone and stay or she can create hell in the house and leave.

I still feel in the patriarchal society, a woman holds the most power in the house. It depends on a woman's attitude on how the future family will be raised.

I think this is how the elderly are now realising that it might have been wiser to invest in raising a daughter rather than in a son. Like that saying goes "you have a son with you until he takes a wife, but you have a daughter with you till the end of life."

Elderly parents want to be physically and financially independent, but wish to be emotionally dependent on their children. Daughters hold that key to emotional well-being for their elderly parents. Nowadays, I see more daughters attending and accompanying their elderly parents' doctors appointments rather than having the son or daughter-in-law taking them to the doctor and "manhandling" them. Again, the woman plays a crucial role here in graceful aging.

I remember an elderly man once said to me that he would like to move in to his daughter's place once he gets too old to look after himself. I asked him why. He said she would look after him like her own child but she would still give him his dignity of being a self-respected adult. He said he wouldn't mind his grown-up daughter stripping off his clothes and seeing him naked and bathing him and changing his soiled sheets. But he said he would die of mortal embarrassment if his daughter-in-law had to do the same task for him. He said he was happy to stay independent for as long as he could, but if he had to let go of his dignity before he dies...he said he would happily surrender that dignity to his own daughter instead of his daughter-in-law. (However, I do know some grown-up sons who have showered and toileted their elderly parents till they died.) This was told to me by an elderly man who died a few weeks later. He died under his daughter's care.

Who we choose to be comfortable with to surrender our dignity to in our final days should determine how we plan to live our life and how we choose to set up our family structure accordingly. Even in our last days, we should have a choice and our opinions should matter. Otherwise, we would remain another lifeless soul on a large family portrait with a straight face and a forced smile....and sadly, that might be all that we are remembered for once we have passed on

In 1856, twenty-three-year-old widow Kate Warne walked into the office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago, announcing that she had seen the company’s ad and wanted to apply for the job. “Sorry,” Alan Pinkerton told her, “but we don’t have any clerical staff openings. We’re looking to hire a new detective.” Pinkerton would later describe Warne as having a “commanding” presence that morning. “I’m here to apply for the detective position,” she replied. Taken aback, Pinkerton explained to Kate that women aren’t suited to be detectives, and then Kate forcefully and eloquently made her case. Women have access to places male detectives can’t go, she noted, and women can befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspects and gain information from them. Finally, she observed, men tend to become braggards around women who encourage boasting, and women have keen eyes for detail. Pinkerton was convinced. He hired her.

Shortly after Warne was hired, she proved her value as a detective by befriending the wife of a suspect in a major embezzlement case. Warne not only gained the information necessary to arrest and convict the thief, but she discovered where the embezzled funds were hidden and was able to recover nearly all of them. On another case she extracted a confession from a suspect while posing as a fortune teller. Pinkerton was so impressed that he created a

*Women’s Detective Bureau within his agency and made Kate Warne the leader.

In her most famous case, Kate Warne may have changed the history of the world. In February 1861 the president of the Wilmington and Baltimore railroad hired Pinkerton to investigate rumors of threats against the railroad. Looking into it, Pinkerton soon found evidence of something much more dangerous—a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln before his inauguration. Pinkerton assigned Kate Warne to the case. Taking the persona of “Mrs. Cherry,” a Southern woman visiting Baltimore, she managed to infiltrate the secessionist movement there and learn the specific details of the scheme—a plan to kill the president-elect as he passed through Baltimore on the way to Washington.

Pinkerton relayed the threat to Lincoln and urged him to travel to Washington from a different direction. But Lincoln was unwilling to cancel the speaking engagements he had agreed to along the way, so Pinkerton resorted to a Plan B. For the trip through Baltimore Lincoln was secretly transferred to a different train and disguised as an invalid. Posing as his caregiver was Kate Warne. When she afterwards described her sleepless night with the President, Pinkerton was inspired to adopt the motto that became famously associated with his agency: “We never sleep.” The details Kate Warne had uncovered had enabled the “Baltimore Plot” to be thwarted.

During the Civil War, Warne and the female detectives under her supervision conducted numerous risky espionage missions, with Warne’s charm and her skill at impersonating a Confederate sympathizer giving her access to valuable intelligence. After the war she continued to handle dangerous undercover assignments on high-profile cases, while at the same time overseeing the agency’s growing staff of female detectives.

Kate Warne, America’s first female detective, died of pneumonia at age 34, on January 28, 1868, one hundred fifty-three years ago today. “She never let me down,” Pinkerton said of one of his most trusted and valuable agents. She was buried in the Pinkerton family plot in Chicago.

Continued here: From & To Sathish #5