Beautiful story. Thanks for writing. This reminded me of something my mom said to me. In India too, there's a tradition of the woman's mother taking care of them when they have the baby, they are not respected or monetarily rewarded for that or anything, it's more like a responsibility, like you said, childcare is considered as women's responsibility only. More so, if the child is a girl. While the married women is strong and working othetwise, all the benefits from her are to be enjoyed by the husbands' family only, but when she is pregant Or weak after pregnancy, it's her mom and maternal homes' responsibility to tend to them. They get blamed in case of pregnancy loss too, among all the other mishaps happening to the married women. But if the woman is working and earning, then their parents or siblings or anyone else from the maternal family are not to get the benefit from them, even though it's those people who invested in the women, brought them up. Their income and labor are entirely reserved for the husbands' family. So, back to my mom's story. When I was born, she was 23 only. Her mother and two sisters came to her rescue, My maternal grandma took care of our family as well as her own family all at the same time. But after some months, my father and his relatives started creating so much issues, disrespected my grandmother, threw fits, that she was forced to leave while her self-respect was still intact. My mom said that was the first time she started feeling distanced from my father. The strange thing is even then also she was earning, in fact she was the only earning member, my father was idling away with some deposits at the bank. This is why financial indepence of women, and a matrilocal, matrilineal family are so important. If women are to live with self-respect, happiness and fulfillmwnt, we absolutely need that.