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Confessions of a Working Mom

My son turns 8 next week. And he doesn’t know how to tie his own shoes.

Let’s be honest. Some folks reading that sentence will think that’s just horrifying. Others think it’s pretty hilarious. Others don’t see why it really matters.

It’s just one of many examples of things parents are supposed to teach their kids that just slipped through the cracks. As a working mom, I’m painfully aware of them and for the most part have not really cared too terribly much about meeting some arbitrary timeline for when my kids are supposed to do certain skills. I figure when all the kids in Julius’ class make fun of him for not being able to tie his shoes, he’ll find motivation to learn how to do it.

Now others of you just thought that I’m a really mean mom.

See how that works?

We have become so ridiculously judgmental of each other as parents. And we are equally judgmental of people who choose not to have kids.

Who are “we?”

For the most part, “we” are women.

I’m not exempt from this. If I’m to be completely honest, I have a hard time understanding the obsession I see with stay-at-home moms who shuffle their children from one activity to the next so that their entire existence seems to be chained to a mini van. I mean soccer…I can dig that. But soccer, ballet, play-dates, swimming, piano, robot-camp? Really? All of that? On a Tuesday?

I don’t get it.

I’m working from home today and this realization of my own failings as a Mom, my irritation with the judgements I sense from other women, and the fact that I haven’t exactly escaped womanhood without judging a few of my sisters…well, it just hit me at once.

For the most part, I don’t really spend much time thinking about myself as a working mother. There are sacrifices that get made both professionally and personally to find any kind of success with either venture. But it’s a choice I made long ago and I am thankful to women before me who have made it possible for me to make the choice. Because quite honestly, I would be a miserable failure as a homemaker. When I help my kids with school crafts, teachers commend me for “letting them do their own work.”

It’s funny, though. As our economy shifts further away from traditionally male jobs like manufacturing and other heavy labor work, more and more women are in the workplace. We should have this figured out already.

Yet this eternal tug of guilt and judgement doesn’t seem to go away. Ultimately, we seem to have gotten to a point in the evolution of equality where women seem to be our own worst enemy.

When I talk with friends who are professional women without kids, they will admit to feeling resentment toward women with kids who are always leaving early for concerts or soccer games or doctor appointments. My stay-at-home mom friends will talk about this sense of always needing to prove their value to society, and to their husbands who work with professional women. And if you are a working mother, you are always walking the tightrope of guilt between both groups who secretly hate you.

So this is a call to action to stop it. Just stop it. Assume the women around you made the choices they did for very good reasons. That they have a better sense of who their children are and what their needs are than you do. And that if they don’t have children, it’s not because they have a strange and unhealthy relationship with cats.

As a means of exorcising these demons of judgement and guilt, it seems a good way to start is to admit to it all. Admit to our failings (the things that prod us with guilt) and our judgements (the things we catch ourselves thinking about others).

Things like the fact that Julius has not yet graduated out of velcro. And that I find myself disturbed for no good reason at uber-activity-oriented mom-i-vans out there. Here’s a few more. Some child related. Some work related. Some kinda funny. Some honestly horrible. Most just from this week.

- My daughter painted her leg with nail polish 3 days ago. I still haven’t removed it.
- Both of my kids had cereal for dinner. And it wasn’t Bran Flakes.
- I volunteered to build activity books for Julius’ second grade class and have ripped almost all of them. And I’m only halfway done.
- My son hasn’t been to the dentist for almost 2 years.
- Neither of my children have ever flown a kite.
- When I work from home with my kids, it takes me twice as long to do the same work as if I were in the office. And I’m constantly yelling at my kids: “Quiet! I’m trying to work!” In other words, it’s not a vacation.
- Often my kids come to our bedroom in the middle of the night and sleep on our floor. I don’t notice till morning.
- I have used TV as a babysitter.
- My 3 year old said: “What the hell!” last week.
- Almost every day one of my kids says: “I wish you didn’t have to go to work.”

Am I alone? Do any of my sisters out there have any “secret confessions” of guilt or judgement? What about you guys? Is there a secret world of guilt we don’t hear about?

Come. Purge with me. It’ll make you feel better.