I remember being sat at school, teenage hormones erupting all over my face and puppy fat edging over my pleated skirts, listening to the teachers talk about future careers and day dreaming of what I would become.
Further studies led me to meet Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer and I knew that when I was all grown up I could be whatever I wanted, I could vote I could have a career; I could choose to have a family and still bring home the bacon.
And so I do….
But where is the book that tells you how to credibly walk into a business meeting with nappy cream on your cuff because the baby secretly caught you on the way out. Where is the book that tells you how to divide yourself in two to answer work calls and read a bedtime story?
Where can I find an appeasement to my guilt that whilst I am out earning pennies I am missing my babies getting bigger?
I love my job, I love my children, but often the combination of the two is exhausting.
I dash home from work ready to swoop up the three of them and turn into ‘fun mummy’ but instead I arrive into the chaos of bedtime for three where all too often tears and tantrums are lined up waiting to greet me at the door.
Will I ever manage to quell the crushing feeling that I should have spent more time with BB whilst she has been in spica.
And then it takes a six year old to put life into perspective, a six year old to teach you that you are not missing out but instead creating a life for your family.
As I dashed out of the house this morning twin girl pressed a hand-drawn picture into palm. It showed a vibrantly coloured much slimmer me falling down a water slide whilst my children bobbed in the water waiting for me to splash land.
The accompanying text read…
Dear Mummy thank you for going to work, it’s ok at home but we miss you. I love you lots love from Molly.
Being a working mum can be hard, being a stay at home mum can be tough, both are paths we choose to take and both are roads we travel for our children.
Sometimes though a simple thank you makes you remember why you do it…
For any other working mums looking for inspiration for a new role; please check out workingmums website, as a recruiter I use them a lot to find people for new roles and they offer some cracking jobs for other mothers like me. Working mums have sponsored northernmum for the reference but as I am a user of them I am more than happy to do so.
I’m a working mum, not through choice but as a financial need. I do feel bitter at times I’m missing out, especially when they come home with great works of art and I’ve missed out on the exciting day.
Your not alone, though sometimes it feels like it with everything on our shoulders.
Sorry bit of a rant. *sigh*
Dont get me wrong, currently I have to work, I dont have a choice, but I have ‘chosen’ to work before and I think I need to work – does that make sense?
and yes often I feel like a bottle of lemonade with the top on when it has been shaken up; is nothing worse than trying to do important work stuff and then a parentmail pops in your inbox reminding you it is mums make muffins tomorrow and you know you cant go….
But my kids see me working to make a life for us all, they know I work to pay the morgage and the occasional (very) holiday, my daughter knows she can have a career and combine kids, when she reads this blog one day she will know it comes with an emotive price.
thanks for commenting x
It’s just rubbish! Even now my boy is at school I hate having to go to work and stressing all the time about who’s picking up or what to do if he is ill. Right now he is spending his Easter holiday with my MIL just because I need to work this week, the guilt is tremendous.
And as for the w@nkers in my office that make out I have it easy if I leave to do the school run…I still have to do my 40 hours that week, regardless of what time I left the office!
I struggle with 1, I have muchos admiration for you!
Thanks, but I think leaving them is just as tricky with 3 as it is with one!
Oh I still relate to this, having done the working and not working thing every which way. I too had to work when dd1 was small, while my friends stayed at home and I really felt that I was missing out, even though I was enjoying my career at the time, then I worked part time on number 2 and 3 (pretty perfect) and now I’m at home (perfect for the kids, but not so much for me). I just wish more employers provided more options and more flexibility, even less likely now we’re all in recession x
Its the irony, those of us at work often want to be at home and vice versa.
I think it is the lack of options that causes the frustration!
You know I can totally relate to this. That Molly’s a good egg isn’t she?! xx
It must be her name!
I know exactly where you’re coming from. This sort of crushing guilt can be so difficult to live with sometimes. Like you, I work full-time because I have to; my wage helps to keep the roof over our heads, food on the table and all of us in clothes. But, I hate how it takes so much of my time away from my two children during the week; I really hate how I get home in the evenings and it’s straight into bedtime mode with no real time to play together; I always worry about the things I am missing out on with them; I feel I have to constantly justify myself and my reasons for working to other mums. I’m currently trying to find a way to work more flexibly and improve my work/life balance (is there really such a thing?) but it’s so hard.
It is but not completly undoable.
I am lucky I have a cracking employer and I work flexi hours and important stuff like sports day etc I can often take off at short notice,
the stress comes from the overwhelming knackerness about having to do it all.
a cleaner would help…
It was my eldest’s birthday this week. Thankfully I was able to take the day off and do something fun. My parents decided they wanted to buy her a new summer coat as a present, and told me to choose something they would pay for. I picked the kids up from their grandparents (where they had stayed overnight) this afternoon, and my dad asked me if I had bought the present yet. I mumbled something about not having had time, and a wave of guilt came over me, until my mum whispered “don’t worry, he had a nanny, cleaner, cook and PA when his children were little”.
well done mum!
Guilt is an inevitable companion to motherhood whatever path you take. But what I’ve been dying to ask is – what’s your job?
now I am intrigued – what do you think it is?
That’s almost as fraught as asking someone to guess your age. Can imagine you in a sharp suit and a glass lift. Law? Marketing?
Nothing that glamourous! I am a recruiter, sorry x
I think a lot of it is the attitude you bring. Sometimes at work you can imagine people are thinking things, noticing every little thing, when actually they are busy getting on with their own lives.
I’ve been on conference calls with kids in the background and to be honest a lot of people don’t mind because they know they will get cut some slack when it’s their turn. The increase in working from home makes a lot of this more possible.
I think it depends on your clients, most of mine would not tolerate the noise of my kids in the background – I cant tolerate it most days!
I have four children and have done full time, part time and now stay at home time; the children have been to nurseries, childminders, I’ve had a nanny….none of them are/were ideal, and all of them come with guilt. I know that I am very lucky to be able to at home with my children, but at the moment I feel guilty that I am wasting my brain and the very expensive education that my parents paid for. I don’t miss my very stressful commute, but I do miss the challenge of my career, the rather nice salary and the financial independence of earning my own money. I miss talking to adults during the day about things other than domestic arena subjects, and I miss being ‘professional me’, not just a wife, mother and housewife. However, walking to school or nursery with four little people asking questions, spotting ‘minibeasts’ and just revelling in being little is very special and when they tell me that they love me being at home, rather than being met at the school gates by the nanny, I know that for them, it’s the right thing to do. I just hope that I can find a job to go back to once they are old enough to be a bit more independent……and I hope that I won’t feel guilty reclaiming a bit of my old identity when the time comes.
I’m sure you wont, kids also need to understand where money comes from etc and we want our children to go on and be happy in their chosen careers but at the same point we also want to give them are all. oh the never ending circle!
Hang on in there and remember you only have to be good enough, you don’t have to be perfect – yes in an ideal world we would be able to do everything perfectly but we can’t and we need to stop beating us up when we don’t
Working is important to you and shows your children that it is hard but possible – the rest, the sick on your work shirt, trying to carve out boundaries between bedroom and conference calls is the icing, it can be done and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t (and yes I know I’ve got it totally out of kilter at the mo so who am I to talk!)
LOL! we are so in the same boat as you know, but thanks for the lovely comment
I have mothers guilt! But I need to work for my sanity as well as financial needs. If I didn’t I think i would become a miserable person and probably go slowly nuts. Errr… Does that make me sound selfish? I just think i wouldn’t be the best mum if I couldn’t give him a good start in the future. I also look forward to the days I have off and am more a fun mummy rather than exhausted run down mummy. Lots of random rambling there..!
Doesnt make you sound selfish but sensible to me!
I am very much the same x
I never felt guilty. I think being home for 5 pm helped. Not working a full week. Having absolutely no issues where my priorities lay and once I was gone at 4.30 that was it and I made no apology for that.
I once walked out of a meeting with David Blunkett. I stood up, said sorry but I had child care. He was very nice about it and so sometimes felt a little torn and bad for dumping work when my child was sick.
Possibly these are the reasons that I am now unemployed! ha! oh well!
you are sooooo cool