The Great Mummy Wars
A working mother or a stay-at-home mother, either way, motherhood is not your job.
Being a mother is not a job. We all too often refer to it as one, but it isn’t. Being a mother is something that you are.
When you have a job, you can show up late or not at all, you can quit if you hate it enough, but no matter how tired, stressed, or fed up you may feel, you can’t quit being a mother. You are never off the clock, you can’t take sick leave or a holiday for a week or two, well, not at least until they are old enough to take proper care of themselves!
There are very few jobs in which hugs are a regular part of your day, and someone tells you they love you repeatedly. Most jobs don’t involve quite as much variety as we usually pick one role, rather than take on cook, chauffeur, teacher, cleaner, administration manager, head of finance, gardener, nurse, manager, negotiator… the list is endless.
Being a mother is something you are. It defines you, reinvents you, destroys you, and rebuilds you, each and every day. Being a mother confronts you with your own childhood, the things you thought you knew but now see through both the eyes of a child and the eyes of an exhausted parent. It brings you face to face with all your insecurities, doubts, and lying awake in the middle of the night…
