I came across something interesting today while I was pondering my current mother-employee-babysitter-housekeeper-friend-familymember-wife status today. I decided to Google the definition of a “working mother” and see what the wise internet gods had to tell me.
The first site that came up was Wiki.Answers.com (a sub-site of the famous Wikipedia and Wiktionary websites) which actually lists the question I posed to it: “What is the definition of a working mother?” and below it was their answer. Or technically their lack of answer. “This question has not been answered yet.”
Tell me about it. Not even with the great resources of the internet and the 21st century has anyone come up with the perfect answer to, “What is a working mother”.
I’ll tell you why. Because it’s an oxymoron. Mothers work. If you’re a mother, you work. If you never leave the house, you are working. If you are still in your pajamas at bedtime and haven’t had a shower in three days, you’ve been too busy working. You cook, you clean, you chase, you cuddle, you love, you teach, you scream, you cajole, you drive. You are on the clock from the moment your eyes crack open in the morning (and sometimes earlier!) until you pass out on the couch during Letterman. You never receive a dime for these 120 hour work weeks. There are no vacations, no breaks, no lunch hours and the benefit program is negligible.
And then your children start preschool. You are left with small increments of “free time” on your hands. And life costs money. Well if you’re smart and savvy, you’ll find yourself a little part-time job that will allow you to work only while your children are in preschool and will expand with you as your children grow and are out of the house more.
And there’s the rub. You remember that you like working. You’ve been a stay-at-home mom for 5 years or so and your children are finally in school for 10 hours a week. You like the adult conversation. You like shuffling papers instead of wiping bottoms for a living. You might even be good at it. You’ve made yourself useful at work. You gain more responsibility and you thrive on it. You want to take on more and more and really make yourself feel like a part of society again. But you’ve only got those 10 hours a week to do it in. And that’s not nearly enough.
Temptation sets in. You find yourself thinking about leaving your children in school some more. So that you can work more. So that they can have those “better lives” we all dream of for our children. But there’s that old stay-at-home mother’s voice in the back of your head that’s reminding you, “Didn’t you say you wanted to be home for your children?” “Are you rushing your children into independence to further your own wants and desires?” When does that stay-at-home mother’s license expire again?
Because in every mother’s life there was that moment of decision. That moment right before child number one was born where we sat down with our budget in hand and our husbands at our sides. What’s going to happen when the baby comes? Will I stay home or will I put this child in daycare? Either answer can be correct, but in general we all choose one over the other. Heart wrenching decision or not, we choose what we believe is best for our family in the end. And then we believe the hard choices are over. But we are wrong.
Now your job titles are multiplying. You are first and foremost responsible to these little people you’re brought into the world, then to their daddy, and then to your outside employment. It sounds easy when you put it all down in order like that. But if your life is anything like mine, these lines blur and skew and cross so completely that you can no longer remember if you’re putting the kids in school so that you can work, or working so that your kids can go to school. Do you add more hours to your job to pay for those piano lessons, or do you keep Suzy home another year?
“Working mother” or not, in the end our main goal is clear. Clean, happy, well-adjusted children grow into loving, intelligent, useful adults.
Keeping ourselves sane in the meantime is secondary. But the trick is remembering that it’s not last.
Even for those of us who work at home, it gets fuzzy. I work at home full time and homeschool both my kids, ages 6 & 8. Some days it feels like we do too much, other days not enough. Sometimes I am up by 5 am just to get it all done.
I often find myself pushed to the limit, trying to get just one more hours worth of work done, because an hour spent today on my work can bring us thousands later. But sometimes its just too much.
“keeping ourselves sane”, now that’s funny. I think I lost my mind a long time ago
Well said, Katie! A mom is always working. Having done both the “working at home” mom and the “working at work” mom, I’ve seen both sides. There are times I walk in here, sit down, sip my coffee and BREATH for the first time in three hours because I had spent from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. getting ready, making lunches, preparing dinner, reminding kids to clean up, throwing in laundry, putting on shoes, reminding kids to get their lunches and bags, driving to day care, driving to work and turning on the computer. I miss them terribly during the day - and dropping off my daughter is no picnic when she’s saying, “But mommy, I won’t see you!” Ohhh… tear my heart out a little more little one! The temptation to change your life goes both ways. Once a mom, always a mom! Sanity goes the moment that baby tugs at your heartstrings.