IIT Kharagpur’s ‘Campus Mothers’ Initiative Misses The Point Entirely

More and more women are stepping back from the idea of motherhood today. Having seen their mothers and grandmothers growing up, who diminished in their homes in the service of others, they are unwilling to inherit a role that has historically demanded self-erasure in the name of love.

What sociologists call 'emotional labour' is not simply about nurturing, but being constantly available to manage the emotional demands of others, while suppressing one’s own. Society has painted it as instinct rather than effort, in a very successful attempt to offload this responsibility onto women. And yet, even as many women manage to opt out of this, the world finds new ways to place it back in their hands.

Earlier this month, IIT Kharagpur announced a new initiative to support students in emotional distress. Alongside AI monitoring tools, the institute proposed a more personal intervention: identifying women on campus, especially older female faculty or staff members whose children had grown up, to voluntarily serve as 'Campus Mothers'. These women would offer mentorship, support and a safe space for students struggling with stress, loneliness, or academic pressure.

And while the initiative is well intentioned, in the wake of multiple student suicides, there’s something deeply bizarre about the way it has been framed. The university didn’t call for 'mentors' or 'wellness volunteers'. It asked for 'mothers'. Not counsellors or trained professionals. Just women — presumably equipped with a surplus of nurture, who could pick up the slack in taking care of the students.

And that’s the problem. It’s one more reminder of how easily caregiving defaults to women, particularly older women, who are assumed to have both the temperament and the time to give. It’s not just a stereotype, it’s a social shortcut of sorts. One that folds centuries of unpaid, unrecognised emotional labour into the neat, familiar image of maternal care.

This assumption also conflates motherhood with empathy, as if the former guarantees the latter. I grew up in a household where my mother was often withdrawn as she struggled with her mental health and most of my emotional support came from my father. So not only does a move like this reinforces outdated gender norms, it also sidelines men from roles of care.

One of the tragedies of patriarchy is that it doesn't just overburden women, it also emotionally disables men. While girls are often raised to be communicators, caretakers, and empaths, boys are nudged toward independence, stoicism, and emotional self-containment. So when men are in pain, they don’t know how to turn to each other.

I am well aware that IITs are co-ed and emotional intelligence or empathy isn't gendered by nature, but in our culture it is deeply entangled in and shaped by it, colouring the lens through which we look at and examine emotions. And that’s what we’re unpacking here.

In places like IIT, where hyper-competition and masculine ideals are deeply entrenched, emotional vulnerability among men is often hidden or avoided altogether. Friendships might thrive on banter or shared pressure, but not usually on mental well-being. So when the pressure cracks through, they look not sideways to each other but outward, towards women. This is because patriarchy has taught them that only women are safe containers for pain.

One of the reasons why you don't hear about a 'female loneliness epidemic' because we have built solidarity in womanhood and female friendships that we can rely on for support. It wouldn’t be half as frustrating if they turned to women not to hand over the work, but to learn how to cultivate this kind of emotional infrastructure for themselves.

What’s missing here isn’t just female support. It’s male community. The ability for men to lean on one another without shame. The language and space for men to care, reciprocally and openly. Instead of expecting women to continue filling this gap, the more radical move would be to equip men with emotional tools, and then ask them to show up for each other.

Gendered undertones aside, there’s also something patronising in the underlying logic. Professor Suman Chakraborty, the director of the institute noted that many students come from “pampered homes” and find it hard to cope with independence. So the solution? Re-create a version of home on campus.

It’s a strange paradox: educational institutions are meant to serve as a bridge between dependence and independence — spaces where young adults begin to step out of the familial scaffolding, learn to take responsibility, build the skills required to navigate the world, and slowly come into their own as individuals.

I am not criticizing the initiative by taking the position that the kids need to take care of themselves. But how is it that the same institutions that demand resilience, merit, and high performance from students somehow simultaneously believe they need a mommy to survive it all? Rather than equipping students with tools for autonomy — emotional regulation, peer networks, or access to real therapy, the programme imagines that what they really need is to be re-parented. This isn’t a challenge to patriarchal dependence. It’s a continuation of it.

What makes this even more troubling is the way it shifts emotional care away from professional structures and onto voluntary, unpaid roles. These campus mothers are not trained therapists. They’re not being hired or supported as mental health professionals. They’re simply being asked to fill a gap the institution has left unaddressed for years.

But shouldn’t this kind of care begin at home? Families are supposed to be the first emotional safety net for their kids. But that’s often far from reality. The truth is, many students don’t feel safe enough to turn to their families when they’re struggling. The fear of disappointing the people who have placed so much expectation, financial investment, and social hope on their success doesn't allow them to. In a country where careers in STEM are treated like destiny, failure is made to feel catastrophic. And when that pressure becomes unbearable, it’s not just the family or institution that fails them, it’s the social fabric around them.

So what does the institution do in response? Instead of addressing this deeply rooted alienation, it recreates a microcosm of it. Rather than building real mental wellness infrastructure it offers a surrogate family, complete with a maternal stand-in. It’s not just a failure of imagination. It’s a failure of responsibility. Instead of building robust mental health systems that treat students’ distress with seriousness, and aid to their personal development, which should be a part of the education curriculum in the first place, the institution is reaching for an old cultural archetype to patch the hole.

Another thing about the initiative that rubs me the wrong way is the way the program is presented as a leadership opportunity for women. As if being asked to serve as an unpaid caregiver is some kind of professional advancement. Rather than inviting women to lead departments, shape institutional policy, or influence structural change, they are being gently herded into the most familiar, feminised form of authority: that of the mother.

It is just another version of the very familiar domestic subjugation we have seen in families that says, "No, you should do the meal plans and organise family vacations and buy clothes for the children, and go to school meetings, and remember everyone’s birthdays and doctor’s appointments, because your just so much better at it!"

Throughout history, thinkers have insisted that true education must do more than transmit facts — it must shape the way we think, question, challenge, and ultimately transform the world around us. Diogenes called the education of its youth the foundation of every state. The Greeks practiced 'paideia' — a holistic cultivation of the mind, body, and spirit, designed to produce capable citizens, not mere technicians. In the Renaissance, humanists reclaimed this classical ideal, insisting that knowledge must serve morality, civic life, and self-awareness; not just economic ends.

And this approach shouldn’t be siloed in the humanities. It’s just as essential, if not more so, in STEM, where Indian engineers are infamous for being emotionally stunted and devoid of any social skills. In a country where technical education is often treated as the highest form of achievement, we rarely pause to ask: achievement toward what end? Critical thinking, ethical inquiry, and emotional intelligence — these are not distractions from science and engineering. They are what allow technical knowledge to be applied with awareness, responsibility, and a deep understanding of the society it’s meant to serve along with the structures within it that urgently need to be questioned, reimagined, and dismantled.

If you enjoyed reading this here's more from Homegrown:

The Myth Of The ‘Simple Mother’: How Patriarchy Romanticises Indian Women’s Unpaid Labour

'Women Walk At Midnight' Confronts The Gendered Violence Prevalent In Indian Cities

Revisit Some Of Our Most Powerful Women-Centered Stories From The Year That's Passed