This is one of the most important, most difficult, most frustrating jobs I have ever held. It asks for sacrifice, sleepless nights, bottomless pools of energy and unending patience. It pushes me beyond what I think I can do, eats at me when I don’t measure up, and drives me crazier than I ever thought possible.
This job is the ultimate commitment. It is one of the hugest projects I ever dared to think I could take on. This job pays me nothing, and in fact costs me thousands. This job is…parenting. Five years into this adventure - I am amazed. Amazed at what the job has demanded and at what I have managed to give. Astounded at how it has motivated me to push past barriers, past limitations, past personal shortcomings to do what needs to be done.
I think most people would agree that raising kids is a huge undertaking. No matter how you juggle career, childcare, home responsibilities…adding children adds mountains of work. This isn’t to debate staying at home versus working outside the home. Neither role is easy; neither role creates a better sleep at night because we have found “the secret”. I don’t think the war out there that some people would have us imagine exists. Most moms I know, myself included, are making up their own rules and using any combination we can come up with to balance feeding our souls, being there for our kids and paying the bills.
But I’m curious about something. Do we as a society put the value we should on taking years from traditional work roles to raise our kids? Why, then, does it seem a lowly choice on the success ladder? It seems as though we still define success as a dollar figure. If you aren’t being paid for the work you do, if we can’t put it up on the wall and measure it against other jobs, we don’t know what to do with it. If both parents work, there’s an admiration because we figure the household must be running that much better with a second income in the mix.
Imagine standing at a cocktail party and being introduced to a lawyer, a professor and a stay at home parent. Is there anyone in the room who would assume that the stay at home parent is as smart and as capable as the others? My guess is no. The assumption for many is that staying at home to raise children or stepping off a traditional full time career path is a fallback, a plan B. Is this where we place our kids in our priorities? I chose to have children, I wanted these kids, and consider myself ridiculously blessed to have them. This doesn’t feel like a fallback plan to me.
I think of all the parents I know who are raising kids full-time, part-time, those who are working from home or in any other way coming up with non-traditional forms of juggling it all and think…these are some of the smartest, most capable people I know. I’m proud to be in their ranks, and I’ll stay here as long as needed for my soul and my kids, and as long as we’re still paying the bills.
This, too, is work. Of that I have no doubt.
Printer-friendly version