I sit here exhausted, finishing the dinner I prepared,
writing this blog to give me a little more time before I have to go clean the
kitchen.
Running through my mind, competing for space with a
particularly clingy song, “If you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the
rain…”, which has been driving me crazy for the last few hours since hearing it
picking up my son from school, is a blog I read a few days ago. It was a great blog, a validating blog, one
that made me think, “Yes, thank you!” It
was a blog that started out saying that all moms have a lot to do, we’re all
deserving of accolades, but that particularly wanted to give kudos to working
moms, the moms who others often think “How do they do it all?” You actually don’t see a lot of those, and
the reason why could be easily seen in the majority of the comments.
Comments that say working moms aren’t good moms because they
abandon their children to be taken care of by strangers so they can have the
luxury (luxury???!!!) of going to work.
Comments that express psychologically damaging offense because it is
implied being a stay at home mom isn’t a job in itself. Comments about how much harder it is to be a
stay at home mom because working moms have so many helpers (helpers???!!!) Even
comments about how we shouldn’t commend working moms if we aren’t going to do
the same for working dads in the same sentence.
Well, I’m going to do something very unpopular. I’m calling BS. Bull-Freaking-Crap. (Well, I guess technically that is BFC, but
hey, I’ve had a long day.)
The truth is that married stay at home moms, single stay at
home moms, married women without children, single women with no desire for
children, single working moms, married working moms, moms that work from home,
women without children that work from home, and any other group who is going to
be offended because I didn’t call them out specifically, we all have very different
lives. We all have hard things in our
lives, we all have stressors, but they are likely to be very different things. This is the truth, but per political
correctness, this is the only truth that this full time work from home for a
major company, married, mom to a teenager (one with a few issues that require
neurologist appointments and medication) is supposed to say.
I’m going to now move on to what we’re not supposed to
say. Let me preface this by saying that
in my 49 years of life I have been a member of many “groups.” I’ve been single without kids, married
without kids with no intention of having them, a married mom, a single mom, and
always a working mom but for the twelve glorious weeks where I was on
disability and therefore a stay at home mom to be, and stay at home mom. I do get what it’s like to be all of those. Being a working mom has been the hardest stage of my life, and I'm not going to apologize for saying that.
First of all, yes, being a stay at home mom is a lot of
work. I know this well, because I also
changed diapers when my son was little, taught him to tie his shoes, I take him
to doctor’s appointments, I drive him to school and pick him up everyday, I
take him to sports practice, I help with homework, I pack lunches, do laundry,
volunteer at school and for sports leagues, buy groceries, fill prescriptions, cook
dinner, do housework, and am there when he needs a shoulder to cry on or advice
or to help figure out why his computer won’t boot up. Working moms actually don’t have these
mythical helpers we all hear about. I
kind of picture them as being a bit like Santa’s elves, and I could really,
really use a few of them, but alas I missed the memo on how to get into this
secret world.
Second, working moms don’t go to work to relax and
socialize. I’m laughing so hard right
now I’m having a hard time continuing my thought on that, but thanks, I needed
that laugh after my work day. I go to
work so that I can make my car payment, pay tuition, pay for quarterly
neurologist appointments and expensive medication, pay the electric bill, pay
for the food we eat. My job is not the
least bit relaxing, it is stressful enough that it’s causing me problems with
my blood pressure. I get up at 5:30 am,
get ready for the day, and start my mom job by driving my son to school – a 70
minute round trip if there are no accidents, and then I work from 9 am to 6 pm
at my paid job, using my lunch hour to again do my mom job and pick him up, and
in between there I juggle meetings and figuring out how the heck website A lost
it’s formatting on a page while running an update on website B and coworkers
asking me questions about websites C and D, while the websites E-Z are
wondering why I haven’t gotten back to them yet. That would be the extent of my “socializing,”
unless you count saying “Thank You” to the mailman who brings a package to the
door. After 6, then I start the rest of
my mom job, starting dinner, throwing in a load of laundry, hopefully get back
to making dinner before something burns, clean the kitchen, pack lunches, go to
get school and sports uniforms ready for the morning only to realize I forgot
to put them in the dryer, put clothes in the dryer and start another load, feed
the pets, again go to get the school and sports uniforms ready for the morning,
help my son find the misplaced baseball cap, pour a giant glass of wine, sew a
button back on a pair of shorts, sort through the day’s mail, realize I forgot
to pay a bill that is due and go pay it online, hear the alarm on my phone go
off telling me it is time for my son to go to bed (yes, I really have one! When you are trying to get everything done
you are not paying attention to time), go tell him goodnight, take the trash
out, get myself ready for bed, heat up my dinner that I forgot to eat, and I
finally get to sleep around midnight.
Relax and socialize, ha! There is
not time for that silliness.
Lastly, we don’t think we are better than anyone else, though probably a bit busier. However, we are understandably annoyed when
someone downplays our life as some kind of choice to let other people raise our
children so we can go hang out and party at the office. Personally, I’d love to be a stay at home
mom, it just doesn’t fit my budget, but I don’t believe that being one would
make me better than anyone else either.
There are benefits to both – I would have less stress and less blood
pressure problems and would get a little more sleep if I stayed at home, I have
a little more money and health insurance because I work, for example. When someone writes a blog about the
sacrifices of stay at home moms, I have no issue with that. When someone writes one that says they
understand the struggles of working moms, please, just let us have that for a
minute.
That’s why they have wine.
And it’s about time in my schedule for that large glass.
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