by Asiya Akhter
There is an unspoken belief that women carry within themselves, deeply rooted in socialization: a woman leaves her parents’ home to find her permanent sense of belonging in her marital family. Within this socio-cultural arrangement, it is treated as almost normal that, when serious conflict arises between a couple, it is the wife who is expected to be displaced.
Yet when this becomes the accepted solution, we stop asking what it means for a woman who has given years to that home. Her emotional labour, domestic care and the countless forms of unpaid work through which she has sustained the household are rarely recognised as contributions. A woman may spend twenty or twenty-five years of her youth, her most productive years, raising children and building a household, but when the marriage reaches a point of conflict, the immediate solution society often imagines is that she should leave.
I have observed such a case closely over the last few days. A woman who had spent more than twenty years in her marital home, with children now in adolescence, had suffered a serious deterioration in her health, and years of disrespectful treatment by her husband and in-laws had left her physically and psychologically vulnerable. At one point, she was so unwell that she was unable to work and had nearly reached a life-threatening condition. Yet even in that state, her husband repeatedly told her to leave and return to her parents’ home.
Her parents, however, were themselves ageing and dependent. Months have passed without a call or visit from her husband or in-laws. I suggested that if she now had to bear her expenses alone, she could consider seeking maintenance through the law. She initially said nothing. Later, she agreed, but still could not bring herself to take the step.
What stayed with me was her hesitation to pursue legal action. I began to realise that she no longer seemed to feel that she belonged to her natal home. I think this is where our socialisation begins to reveal its psychological consequences. Her experience made me think of how many women are left feeling the same way. Girls are raised with the understanding that their parents’ home is temporary and that their real or permanent home will be their marital home. A woman therefore does not just move into another house after marriage. Over the years, she develops routines, relationships, memories, and an identity around that home. Motherhood further deepens this attachment.
After two decades, being told to leave is therefore not purely displacement from a physical structure. It can become a disruption of identity and belonging. The question then becomes a troubling one at fifty, after having spent the greater part of her adulthood in her marital home, where does such a woman psychologically belong?
Deep within, she may still wish to remain with her children, in the home where she has spent years nurturing and raising them, in the home she helped build through years of care and devotion. Yet culturally, she has been taught that she no longer belongs to her parents’ home either.
This is why economic independence, although essential, cannot be the entire answer. Women today are increasingly entering education, employment, entrepreneurship, and public life amid persistent social barriers. But alongside economic independence, there is another form of preparedness we rarely discuss that is about: psychological independence from the idea that a woman’s belonging is conditional upon the continuation of her marriage.
The consequences can extend to children as well. Prolonged parental conflict can increase the risk of aggression and delinquent behaviour. Weakened parental supervision and a lack of emotional support may also leave children more vulnerable to antisocial behaviour, including substance abuse, and can affect their academic adjustment. The child, therefore, should not disappear from our understanding of marital conflict.
I am not arguing that couples should remain in harmful or toxic relationships for the sake of children. Nor am I arguing that every marriage must be preserved at any cost. My question is different. Why is the displacement of the woman so readily accepted as a cultural solution? Why do we so easily overlook the emotional labour and unpaid services she has contributed to the household for decades? Why are her identity and psychological impact overlooked?
And why does separation so often become a moral verdict on the woman herself, like “she could not sustain her marriage,” “she failed as a wife,” rather than an opportunity to examine the social conditions that made her unsafe, economically vulnerable, or psychologically unprepared for displacement? This is where Hannah Arendt’s idea of the “banality of evil” becomes worth reflecting upon. Arendt’s argument, developed while observing the Eichmann trial, was not that ordinary people are necessarily monsters. Rather, she drew attention to how destructive acts can become ordinary when people stop critically examining the systems, rules and assumptions they simply follow.
Our situation is obviously not comparable to the historical crimes Arendt was analysing. But her broader warning about unthinking conformity offers a useful lens. A harmful social practice does not become harmless solely because generations have treated it as normal. When we unquestioningly accept that a woman should leave, when we tell her to adjust until she can no longer endure it, when we reduce decades of domestic and emotional labour to a woman’s duty with no reward, and when we judge her for failing to preserve a marriage without questioning the conditions within it, we participate in a social pattern that is harmful beneath the surface yet appears ordinary, and therefore deserves critical examination.
The question is larger than whether a woman has rights on paper. We frequently speak about women’s rights, dignity and empowerment. But rights lose their meaning when social behaviour continues to communicate the opposite. A woman needs legal rights, and the psychological assurance that her belonging does not disappear with the breakdown of a marriage, economic resources that prevent displacement from becoming destitution, and a social culture that does not treat her as a temporary resident of every home she enters.
Where does woman belong psychologically? Only when this question is addressed at both the individual and societal level can we meaningfully speak of the psychological, social and economic well-being of women and, ultimately, of healthier families and a more humane society. The question is for women who are yet to marry: if one day she is asked to leave her marital home and her natal home also does not feel like hers, where will she go? How can she make sure that she does not become another woman with nowhere to belong? The answer lies in building a life where marriage is a part of it, rather than the only place where a woman finds her security, identity, and sense of home. This also requires a closer examination of the social norms through which women learn to understand where they belong.
The author can be mailed at bintez566@gmail.com
