Stay at Home Mother
« Previous EntriesBeing a stay at home mother is/is not hard
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007I don’t care what anyone says: my job as a stay-at-home-mother is really hard sometimes.
The baby cried from about two o’clock this morning onwards and when light finally appeared it was obvious why when I saw this around his mouth: an allergic reaction to something he ate yesterday (although I’ve no idea what)
and he is as miserable as sin today.
Because I was awake half the night I threw up three times before breakfast and now feel sick and have an almighty headache which I cannot take anything for. I want to be in bed but there is no-one to look after the children. My BFF is away on holiday, along with most of the residents of our village so I have no emergency backup.
It is the middle of August and the weather is like this:
and the kids are going stir-crazy.
The baby has decided to start screaming. All day, every day. For fun.
Because of all this I feel really isolated at the moment.
Round where I live most of us are SAHMs by choice. Most of us appreciate having time to spend with our children. I chose to be an SAHM and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But it is sometimes hard.
What would my day have been like if I had been working today? I would have had to hand over my tired, allergic, overly-attached baby and older children to their caregiver and make my way, fighting back the tears, to work. I would have spent a tired, stressful day or maybe a productive day with colleagues and friends, maybe with a lousy boss, maybe with someone who congratulated me on some good work, maybe had a nice lunch with friends, maybe a moment around the coffee machine to talk about something grown-up, maybe throwing up (always easier at home), still suffering a headache. I would have been paid. Then having to leave late and in a hurry to make it in time to pick up the children. They are tired, over-stimulated, needing time with me. After they are in bed, I start on the chores.
My day at home was easier in many ways. The time I spend with my children is invaluable. Still, I slave all day doing repetitive chores, preparing food, cleaning up, preparing activities, teaching, clearing up, refereeing fights, applying ice to bumps, reading stories, changing nappies and clothes without any sense of having achieved anything tangible. I also sacrifice certain things so we can live on one income.
But the things that make it hard are not necessarily these things. I feel isolated and under-appreciated being at home. I often feel lonely despite having a good support network. The ‘work’ aspect of being a SAHM is repetitive and boring. I don’t feel like I am contributing anything to anyone outside of the house. I don’t feel valued by society or by the economy. I worry about how I will get back into a career after such a long break. I worry about how little I am likely to be paid compared to my colleagues when I do return. When my first baby was born there were other feelings (which have now passed): a feeling of ’shock’ over the whole baby thing, a sense that I was totally and utterly on my own looking after this new, helpless creature but particularly a loss of identity, a sense that I was not so much me as someone’s mother.
These are not new arguments. Motherhood is hard in different ways for different mothers. I have phases where I am swimming and other phases where I am sinking. All I ask is that others don’t judge what my days are like. Especially today.
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Posted in Stay at Home Mother, Other Mothers
Stay at home mom
Thursday, August 24th, 2006My annual postgrad alumni invitation has once again arrived with a thud in my inbox. It always feels heavy, even though it is an e-mail, because you can sense the gravitas with which my college issues the summons. And it does feel like a summons rather than an invitation.
These days I receive it with an increasingly heavy heart.
The college prides itself on its alumni network. Like most public (for which read private) schools and good universities here in the UK the ‘old-boy network’ flourishes. As a member of this I find it hard to reconcile my loathing of the concept of the old-boy network with the privilege I am accorded by being a member of it. Added to that, although I am still a member by dint of my educational background - Oxbridge - I feel pressure to opt-out, at least until I return to work in my academic field, because I am - and have been for nearly five years now - a stay at home mum. I could go to the dinner, see old friends, colleagues and tutors, but I share little in common with them at the moment. The minute I admit that I am a stay-at-home mum, the conversation would likely turn back to the subject of the moment, thereby subtly excluding me regardless of whether I could contribute knowledgably to the conversation or not. It’s an embarrassing moment.
I’ve thought about lying. I keep up with new developments and research in my field as best I can, but time and energy are short and I know I have holes in my knowledge. How apparent these would be to those at the dinner is not something I wish to test, not when the fall would be so important. Lying would also imply that I am embarrassed about what I do. I think it’s the most important job I could do. Sadly many of my fellow alumni don’t share my view. They probably understand why I chose to stay at home, it’s just that they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that I am who I always was, just with a little less relevant experience. I would even try to refrain from talking about nothing but my children! Because that’s what mothers do!
So I think I’m better off taking a break from the whole thing - alumni dinners, old boy networking, career moves - until I am ready to re-enter the work force. It is my choice but it would be nice to feel that I could go along and talk about all manner of things and enjoy a pleasant evening catching up with old friends. A postgraduate alumni dinner is always going to be a closed-ranks affair, allowing only those with the right knowledge in. It’s just I never expected to be considered an outsider.
Still, what pleases me most about this whole situation is that I know that, as I am now a career stay at home mum - and long after that - I will always be welcomed with open arms at mothers’ alumni meetings.
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Posted in The Politics of Motherhood, Stay at Home Mother
Moving forward
Friday, March 25th, 2005As a (shudder) semi-Type-A personality I rejoice in getting things done. Much of my post partum depression and frustration at being stuck at home with small children can be attributed to two things: 1) tiredness and 2) the need for a sense of life moving forward.
Being a stay at home mom, for me, means I am simply marking time personally. I don’t have time really to achieve anything that gives me a sense that my life (rather than my children’s) is moving forward. I am not learning anything new, producing anything, working towards promotion, bettering myself, anything.
So yesterday, Matthew looked after the children and I wrote the first thing I have written in a long time.
And I know you may not be as excited as I am about this, but it was an important day.
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Posted in Stay at Home Mother
I want it all
Friday, March 4th, 2005In my attempts to overcome my postpartum depression (yes, I’m on that topic again, just for a change) I have considered at length why some mothers appear to accept their lot regarding raising children and simply get on with it, why some mothers love (almost) every minute of having children and why other mothers, like me, seem to struggle.
I loved the time at home with my first son, Harry, which is probably why I had a second so quickly. I love my second son William just as much, but not the time at home with them so much. Is it because I have two and it is harder work? Is it because I’ve been at home for over three years now? Is it the cumulative lack of sleep? The cumulative lack of interesting adult conversation? Is it because I have reached my emotional, if not practical limit as to the number of nappies I can change, meals I can prepare, broken nights I can tolerate, whining I can listen to (mine and others’ children) and tantrums I can stand? Have I just gone as far as I can with toddler groups, coffee mornings and playdates with mothers who I would otherwise have little in common with?
I also miss the person I was. I was independent, kinda groovy, with an interesting job. Like many twenty-something singles, I was also self-centred and used to doing my own thing. That has given way to someone who is more patient and loving and certainly more devoted and caring. I am also more bored, boring and, dare I say it, a little bit resentful. This affects me and my levels of happiness (but NOT how I look after my children, people).
If I wasn’t planning to have another baby I would seriously be thinking about going back to work part-time if I could bring myself to leave my children in someone else’s care. But I can’t do that. Either that or I would be thinking about the free time coming my way once the children are old enough for pre-school - I would consider it time off in lieu for the three years of hard labour I have done! Time off for good behaviour! Call it what you will, but I wouldn’t need to justify using those precious school hours to rest, recover and re-group. A cup of coffee without being interrupted! A telephone conversation without noises off! I could spend my days doing things that ended solely in exclamation marks!
Anyway, it is over three years since I had a career and interesting, well-paid, part time jobs are not exactly throwing themselves at me. And having another baby throws up a whole host of things I’d rather not think about: the endless days, the long nights, the feeding (hours and hours of feeding), the crying, the nappies, the repetitiveness of it all, mitigated only by the fact that I know IT DOES NOT LAST FOREVER. Despite all that I know I want another. Yes. I. am. insane.
So, let’s recap. I want it all: a great, well-paid job I can do from home while my obedient children run round my feet, tended to by a wonderful nanny whom they adore. I also know I can’t have it and therein lies my problem. I adore my children, tolerate being at home with them all the time, but loathe myself for thinking like this.
I love my children more than anything in the world. But I don’t always love who I’ve become.
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What it is (to be a mother)
Saturday, February 5th, 2005I’ve been trying to pinpoint what it means to be a mother, particularly a stay-at-home mother, in the twenty-first century. I don’t mean the day-to-day stuff. That is obvious enough. But when I think back to how far women’s rights have come in the last few years it seems impossible that we are still at a place where mothers are so invisible. This is the best word I can use to describe how I feel in society.
On the journey home from having my afternoon tea in a London hotel I was trying to figure out why I felt so different while I was in London. It wasn’t simply that I was doing something for me, something unrelated to having and looking after children. It wasn’t simply that I was relishing some unusual freedom. It was the fact that, despite being in a city where no-one knew me and nobody really cared what I was doing, I still felt less invisible than I do as a mother.
Why is it that in these days of supposed equality mothers are accorded so little place in society? No-one gives us any credit or recognition, financial or otherwise, for staying at home and raising children. In the UK, our government is desperate to get mothers back to work, to dump our children in the daycare places they are striving to provide. The message: we are clearly not contributing to the economy unless we are at work! But you can be sure they are not encouraging us back to work for our own sanity and pleasure. The economies of daycare are obvious though: one daycare assistant can look after three or four children. That means three or four mothers can be contributing to the economy plus the daycare assistant, instead of being unemployed. And the children are still looked after. Voila!
But it is not just the government that accords mothers so little place in society. At a party, conversation stops dead and eyes glaze over when you tell people that you are a stay-at-home mum. I should know, I used to be one of those people who couldn’t think of anything to say to someone who defined themselves as a ‘mum’. Shame on me. Nobody calls me up to contribute to anything of any great value outside the home anymore. My home life is my chosen epicenter. But my village is my enforced boundary.
Maybe this is one of the reasons that mothers gravitate towards each other: no-one else is really interested in us!
Despite remaining well-read, well-educated and well-informed no-one is interested in what I think anymore. They gave me the courtesy of pretending to be interested before I had children. Well, nothing has changed, except that I sprogged. Now I’m not even accorded the assumption that there is more to me than being a mother. My brain might be atrophying slowly, but it has not completely gone! And although it’s not helped by the fact that I feel that I may have little to offer anyone, I know in my heart of hearts that I have plenty to offer but only, it seems, if I contribute more to life, to the economy, to my world around me than simply being a mother.
Lots of mothers want or need to work. To them I raise my glass: working and looking after children is the hardest combination there is. I want to work for my own sanity, to achieve a better balance in my life. But I also want to be at home with my children. I chose the latter and it has not been easy; it has not been good to my sense of self. But it sure would help if I weren’t made to feel so redundant in society by those in power, the media and by those around me.
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Posted in The Politics of Motherhood, Stay at Home Mother
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