There’s this article that friends overseas forwarded me entitled "5 Ways Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids". A pretty self-explanatory title (if a tad inflammatory), and a complete and accurate indication of its content. What was more interesting to me though, was the debate it engendered, both in social media and my own personal friends-media.
One camp of my friends (largely working-outside-the-home moms) felt verrry strongly that they were being short-changed by having a career. The price they paid for that ‘privilege’ they said, was having to juggle their careers and run the household plus manage the kids’ lives. This group continues to work outside the home because they either had to (financially/because of lifestyle choices) or for sanity. Slightly resentful that they had to do both jobs whilst their husbands got to focus mostly on their outside-the-home jobs, they say it is social conditioning that creates this expectation that women have to do it all if they choose to work outside the home. This is based on traditional roles of the men being the breadwinner and women being the homemaker. Whilst parenting in these (mostly) middle-to-upper-class families was a joint effort, the daily logistics, physical care and things like making lunches, ordering the groceries or seeing to kids clothing still largely fell onto mom’s plate to accomplish.
Another camp (interestingly enough the stay-at-home mothers) thought ‘of course its my job. I have the boobs, and so my job is taking care of the kids’. More accepting of having to do home-and-childcare as their ‘job’, this group weren’t necessarily comprised of the older generation, but a mix of Gen X,Y, and millenials who had prioritised kids over careers. This could have been due to the luxury of choice, a firm choice (compromising on lifestyle to get more family time), or they were in that position circumstantially (like being expats in China!). Most of this group saw staying at home a privilege as some of their own mothers had to work outside of it, and they ‘never got to see the kids’. They also believed that of the two parents, they were the most qualified to stay at home, being female and having “natural instincts”.
Yet another, smaller, group believed that you simply do the job you are most skilled at, and there is no gender preference. The ‘Mom-job’ goes to the person with the most time to do it and it is simply a coincidence if the man ends up the breadwinner and the woman the homemaker.
I was personally forced to confront this issue a few years ago when my (then) 3-year-old daughter announced loudly (and proudly) in public “when I grow up I want to be a mommy, just like my mommy!!” I wasn’t sure whether to cringe, grin sheepishly, gag her or run and hide as I could see it on everyone’s faces. What exactly was I teaching my daughter?! It made me think about the type of role model I was.
The truth was, she didn’t see me working outside the home at anything but a mommy because I didn’t – I did all my writing around her sleeping or daycare time so her perception was that I only took care of her and ran the household. My bad.
Why did this suddenly feel wrong? In this case I don’t think there’s any difference between having girls or boys so it is not so much about breaking gender mould’s as it is about making an educated choice. We simply want our children to know there are options beyond what they personally see or experience. Isn’t that what most parents want?
So now, I not only make it a point to write in front of both my girls, I talk loudly (and proudly) about it. It’s just part of my Mom-job!
[Images via Planetfem]
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