Mantra for the dedicated Mother: "I am not perfect. I will not be perfect. Where love and caring exist, I can be me; it will be okay."
This morning I was reading at abcnews and this article caught my attention. It talks about the myriad of responses over a piece that ran in the UK, "Does Raising Children Bore You to Death?" It was written by a stay at home mom. I have not read the actual article, but just a summary ... Needless to say there has been a flurry of response. One such response, "Your lack of parental love borders on child abuse." What!? I wish we could all be so perfect as to never be bored or incredibly un-stimulated by the day-to-day of raising children. The persons making these sorts of remarks (in large droves) need to come over and have a chat with me. Really. You are all invited to dinner. I will tell you about me, my children, my family, and my life in general. You must also stay long enough to watch interaction between me and my children, too. Then, and only then, will you be allowed to judge my parenting ability.
I'm not saying that I'm bored all day every day. Of course not. We have fun together. We paint, play play-dough, color, take walks, go on picnics, etc. But I am an adult. Making a car fall from my head for laughs gets boring after the first minute. Maybe I lack creativity? I can handle that accusation just fine.
Please don't tell me I am a bad parent, based on nothing more than an honest confession. A good parent is never bored? Wow. Then I know ALOT of bad parents. Funny, I've always felt those families to be good, well-adjusted, caring and well-balanced.
Really. To expect, or assume, that someone with my personality-type will always want to play with the kids, do the housework, and smile while I do it? Think again. I don't think I'm Mother-of-the-year, or anything. Hardly. I also don't think that I should "never have re-produced", as some of the comments towards the author of the article in question suggested. Another comment was, "There are some people who are like that. You know, anytime it takes away from themselves, they're not happy and they don't like it." I don't know this person, and I am trying not to judge, but it does not seem as though she understands the point. There's a difference between the selfishness that is being implied through this statement and the simple truth that there is a balancing act between you, the mom, and you the you. Taking away from yourself is not entirely healthy; it's taken me 3 years of staying home to understand this, embrace it, and attempt to do something about it.
Staying at home is the right thing for me and my family, right now. It would be incorrect to suggest that it is a proper and natural match to me. Ha! It has been difficult, to say the least. I am a social person. Outgoing. Extroverted. Staying at home in a nearly efficiency sized condo with 2 kids and a dog, day after day after day after day* ... is not good for me. There have been consequences to this decision that we (my husband and I) have learned we need to recognize and deal with.
Allow me to stress that I am not complaining. While I may lament upon the occasion (this is the last thing I ever thought I'd find myself doing ... I have mentioned the irony, once or twice**), I don't recall ever complaining. I think of the above rant as a statement of fact. Truth. While I may have fallen into this role, due to a lay-off, I did recently have an opportunity to apply for job. Being hired was a very good possibility. It would have been good for me to work again, and I was very interested in the position. I decided that it was not a good move for our family health. My husband agreed. I did not apply. I had a choice, I made it. I will not complain.
Does that mean I totally love being at home? Does this mean that being at home is the best place for me, the person, to be? No. Truthfully, it isn't. Do I get bored? yes. Does it matter that I get bored? No.
It isn't about me. It's about our children; our family. It's about raising our family to be what we feel it can be/should. My wants and needs are secondary to this. Anything less is what's selfish.
*Do not misinterpret. I am not shut inside our apartment all day everyday ... I do get outside .... with the kids ...
**God definitely has a sense of humor.
About Me
- meandering mama
- On the surface I appear to be the stereotypical 30 something suburban housewife/mom. It's my fervent hope that there is much more to me than that. I deplore being judged solely on the merits of a stereotype - Those that do the judging are usually not kind in their analysis.
Harry Potter
2 comments:
Ok, first off…WOW!! I was intrigued by your post and decided to read the article for myself. I will say that I agree with you completely. I may not have children of my own, but do spend all day with other people’s children. While childcare is different, there are many similarities. While I pride myself of being “an Early Childhood Professional” I also have spent time with children who drive cars off your head for a good laugh. I’ve also done the dirty work of cleaning up vomit, pee, oh yes and even poop. I can empathize with the stay-at-home mother. To say that mothers shouldn’t get bored with the job is just ludicrous in my opinion. I don’t want to make it sound like I hate my job, when in fact I love my job. But, I won’t lie; I enjoy the two hours of naptime in the afternoon. The other staff members and I have a chance to talk like adults, and engage in adult conversation. I think being a stay-at-home mom is a luxury that some are able to take advantage of, and should. Raising children is difficult; nobody claimed it was easy job. But, the monotony of it can get a little boring in my opinion.
Ashley --- THANK YOU!!! (and, hey ... look on the bright side, at least you don't have a bathtub at work. Poop is harder to deal with there ...)
I wanted to add, too that stay at home mom's may have the nap-time hours for relief, but there are generally no other adults around for conversation. It adds to the monotony.
My husband will be working 20 days, in June, with only 2 days off to rest. He'll be in New York for one of those weekends. While I know he isn't looking forward to this because of the exhaustion, I'm not looking forward to it because there will be virtually no break of the every-day for us at home. My only consolation is that it will be summer. We can go outside, have picnics, and people will be off from school. (My sister-in-law is a teacher and there are some kids from church who like to come over.)
The good part to this is that I think this "stint: will be good for my husband, professionally, and the two weekends he'll be working he is getting paid very well. :-)
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