Affirmation

[ailbhe]

One of the many reasons I like Rob is that he never, ever introduced his aunt Lena or his friend Caroline to me as Not Working - he always said "Full-time Mum". It didn't occur to him to count this as "not work" or "not real work" or "a cushy option". So I know, every day, that he thinks what I do is important, and useful, and not as easy as it looks to someone who's never done it.

I had someone say to me this weekend that I might have stayed working if I'd ever found "what I wanted to do". It seems that some people find it very hard to believe that this is what I want to do. I want to have and raise children, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in as equal as possible a partnership with my co-parent, givnig them as rich a life as we can manage.

I also, in my spare time (hah! even that is regulated, scheduled, managed and made-the-most-of) like to do this and that to keep my brain alive, but honestly, stimulating and caring for an active, intelligent baby is quite brain-active, though obviously different parts of the brain than "real work".

It's hard when even feminists see traditional women's work as unimportant, low-status, easy, and for-the-stupid.

You're not like that, I know. But some people are. And I still don't want a degree, or any other qualification, unless I enjoy getting it. I don't want to be overqualified for the jobs I enjoy any more than I already am. With any luck, by the time I re-enter the workforce (another ridiculous phrase, based on denigrating my role now, and that of men who do the same thing I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE), people will have stopped telling me that they think I'm great but the job they're hiring for would bore me so they won't let me have it.

It is by far the most stimulating and rewarding work I have ever done, this baby thing. And now that I'm not in pain all the time, it's even better. lniamh's journal is there to tell you so.

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Ethan of Athos is one of the best books on that - the point where Ethan just can't grasp the concept of a society that doesn't recognise the true cost of raising a child is just wonderful.

I know you've always wanted to do what you do. I also know that you have the very good luck to be married to a man who recognises that you support him as much as he supports you.

Frankly, I do wonder how people cope when both parents work outside the home - it must be completely exhausting.

[ailbhe]

I read Ethan of Athos again recently, specifically for that line.

Oh - and when both parents work outside the home 40 hours a week, they tend, in my experience of the people we know with babies the same age as Linnea, to both have more energy when they're with the child, because the child never gets boring and very few full-time jobs are as tiring as minding a child alone all day. The parents usually work during the child's most active phase, while it's at nursery.

However, it's lonely and miserable, and most parents - especially mothers - hate it, even if they have to do it for their sanity and not just their finances. and then people say that they are neglecting their children by working at all especially full-time. It's a lose-lose situation, motherhood. Except for the big win :)

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

That's interesting - never occured to me that it would be like that. I've just always wondered how a couple of my siblings manage it - one of them is a full-time mum these days, and the other has a husband who works from home and a nursery just around the corner which means that their child-minding schedule is easier to cope with.

[ailbhe]

It's different for people who have exceptionally tiring or stressful or hateful jobs, but they would usually opt to take a cut in "standard of living" for a higher quality of life, unless they don't like looking after kids.