A Life’s Work
I woke up the other morning with thoughts in my head. Typically I was articulate and meaningful in those early sleepy moments. Now I can't remember a thing.
However, rather than ditching the whole idea, I'm running with it. There is a need floating about in my subconscious. A need to evaluate the things that have directed my life up to this point.
Sometimes I find it useful to contemplate being a mother as something I do rather than who I am. Mothering, fathering, parenting suggests an active role, a purpose. I hesitate to use the word 'job'. Too often words like 'work' and 'job' are used to identify ourselves within a value system that categorises people by social status and income. I suppose it's easier for governments to see people in terms of statistics and financial value rather than as a human network of communities with strengths and weaknesses, hopes and needs reaching beyond the establishment. Perhaps this is more difficult to define and in turn more challenging to support.
Yet, if I pause and think for a moment, describing the role of mother as a job or as a career is to give voice and value to the role of many people, often women, that do the hidden work of childcare. Similar to being self-employed, mothering has no union, no sick pay, no pension. For mothers (and fathers), the work of parenting, the importance of what they do, is often forgotten, pushed into a muddy backwater with politicians and businesses paying lip service to its necessity.
I recognise I am very fortunate. My husband runs a successful company. We are in a position of financial stablility that enables me to stay home. I have time to volunteer, I have time to write this blog.
But yet, and yet.
Increasingly, as my two daughters grow older, I see a troubling message forming. How is it for them to see their mother, an educated, capable person, remain at home, attending to their needs, continuing the traditional role of domestic work? Is this right? Is this the role-model I want them to witness? Am I not supposed to be showing them all the things a woman can absolutely do?
In amongst these conflicting messages, I also feel my identity has become entangled with the children I mother. I sometimes feel I’ve lost myself along the way. One thing I do know, that staying-at-home to parent children, to be a housewife — I hate that word, why? — can suck the self-esteem clean out of the strongest of people.
Our identities are so wrapped up in, trapped even, with what we do rather than who we are its hard to see the wood for the trees. What we do can be easily explained. Who we are is infinitely more complex.
We are trained from when we are young to define ourselves by the job we want to pursue. We seek out interests and passions with some vague idea of what we want to be in the future.
What did I want to be? I wanted to be a gymnast.
The trouble I find with all of this is our self-worth becomes aligned with approval. Approval from our family, approval from the community, approval from society at large. And yet the sensible among us know that what we must do is love our children for who they are, not what they do. From here a solid foundation of confidence is allowed to build. This will help them to become people that will undoubtedly feel the knocks and harsh realities of life but won't be broken by them. When I find myself ruminating on my choices, I remind myself this is where the heart of mothering lies.
This post was first published in 2018. I have edited it lightly for a better read. Photo by Tanya Clarke 2017.
