I'm a mum.
Not a "domestic engineer".
Not a "home duties specialist".
Not a "house manager".
Especially not a - love you to bits, Nigella, but still - "domestic flipping goddess".
I'm a mum. I don't need to invent some fancy title for it, to make it sound more "legitimate" than it is. Because it already is legitimate! Why do I need to make up another name for what is, without question, the most important job I've ever done?
I've been a checkout chick, a bakery assistant, a "geeky cards and assorted other geeky things" seller, a systems support librarian, a land tax advisor, a school librarian, a university "liaison" librarian, a cinema projectionist, a bookseller, an author ...
NONE of those jobs is as important as what I'm doing right now.
I'm spending my days being the primary carer for an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING. An ACTUAL, HONEST TO NON-DENOMINATIONAL-DEITY PERSON.
Her life is, literally, in my hands.
And oh golly it scares the living livingness out of me, on a daily basis. This little gorgeous person's happiness and health is up to me. That's what being a mum is. Being entirely responsible for the everything of this tiny actual person.
Oh. My. Golly. Gosh. Is there anything bigger than that?
I mean, sure, I've never worked as a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist or an army sergeant or any other job where actual lives are actually dependent on my actions. In my previous positions, the worst that could possibly happen was that a bunch of cinema-goers might have a slightly blurry movie experience, or a child might not absolutely love the book Grandma bought for their birthday.
This is the most important thing I've ever done. For every mum and dad out there, this job is the most important job we will ever do.
Mum. Dad. Those labels don't need "legitimising", or "snazzying", or "bettering" in any way.
I am proud that my job title is "mum". And I am thankful that raising Tiger never, in any way, actually feels like a job. It feels like a gift, a privilege, an opportunity.
It also feels so very, very scary. I hope she's happy. I hope she's healthy. I hope that I do a good job of this most important job of all.
Because she deserves it.
She deserves for me to excel at this job called Mum. I hope I can.
~ Love, Miss Cackle x
1 comments:
While I agree with the sentiment, wait until you've been doing this for 10 years, you've been devalued & undermined, ignored when your child was in hospital because - of course - YOU'RE A MUM, WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT THE HEALTH AND WELFARE OF YOUR CHILD WHO IS DANGEROUSLY ILL? Obviously you'd know much less than a doctor who has spent less than 5 minutes with him and knows nothing about his medical history and refuses to contact your son's surgeon because the surgeon is a woman.
Other people, people with 'real' jobs and degrees, look down on you and dismiss you as irrelevant and boring. What would you have to contribute to the conversation apart from recommending laundry detergent and stain removal?
And later, when you try to return to the workforce, you'll be dismissed as 'not serious' about a career, after all, all those years you took off to raise children, that was an indulgence proving your unfitness for the 'real world'.
I could go on and on...
If I had to do it over again, I'd still take the years off and be there for my son. I would still resent the fact that it wasn't economically viable for my husband and I to share parenting responsibilities; what I wouldn't have given for greater choice, the opportunity to work part-time at least, to get out of the house when the walls closed in and to talk with real live adults about adult things. But I'd still be there for my kids and do the best I could for them, all over again, if I was faced with the same choices.
Long live social media. You have an opportunity to connect with adults during the child care years that just wasn't available during those years for me. I bet social media saves the sanity of many a full-time parent. :-)
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