Staying at home is no piece of cake

I was recently filling in an application and I had to specify my occupation. Call me proud, but it physically hurt to write I wasn’t employed. Fine, I write, but first and foremost, I’m a mum and that, my dear friends, is not considered to be a job.

If I have to be honest, I have wanted to be a stay-at-home mum since I gave birth to my first daughter but it was never possible before recently. As I have mentioned before, I used to be jealous of women who could afford to stay at home with their children while I was forced to go to work every morning while my daughter was still in bed and return home when most of the day was over. Well, now I am living the dream. I am with my children all the time, from the moment I wake up till I tuck them into bed at night.

So why does it irk me so much to be called a housewife? The truth? I know that many people who aren’t stay at home mums (SAHMs) look at people like me and think I am living the life, sleeping in, going out for coffee dates with other mums and playing with my children all day. I know that because that was my opinion of SAHMs before I joined their ranks.

In reality, I am up at 5:30 every morning, weekends included. I have breakfast and shower and sterilise the baby’s bottles and dummies before I hear her calling me from the bedroom at 6am. The next two hours are a flurry of breakfasts, school lunches, uniforms, nappy changes and email checking. Then comes the school run, for which we’re invariably late. If I need to get groceries, it’s another hour of baby-lugging, which I try to make more pleasant with a quick coffee to get some energy back. This is usually followed by a morning of housework, laundry, ironing and cooking, all the while trying to entertain an increasingly demanding baby. If I am lucky, I manage to grab a quick bite while feeding R before picking M up from school.

The afternoons are consumed by homework supervision, dinner preparation, the girls’ bath time, dinner and their respective bedtime routines. On a good day, I manage to take them out to play for a couple of hours. By the time the children are asleep, I am so tired that washing up the dishes feels like torture. Then it’s time to read and write, if my brain is still functioning by that time. And let’s not forget the hour or so my husband and I try to dedicate to each other if he’s not working.

I admit I sometimes envy my friends who work outside the home. They get to have meaningful conversations with other adults, can go to the bathroom when they need to, can drink or have a snack before they feel faint and have a lunch break (not to mention their own income). Those are all luxuries that don’t feature in the SAHM’s job description. However, I also cannot lose sight of the reason I decided I would stay at home with the children. To start with, I know it’s something temporary. Once both children are in school, I’ll be more flexible. I am also keenly aware that time is zooming by, with our baby turning one in a couple of days. I feel very fortunate to have spent the first year of her life with her day and night. I would have killed to have had the same opportunity when her older sister was her age.

So, even though I feel that the job of SAHMs is largely unappreciated and misjudged (as opposed to that of the working mum, whom we all hugely admire, me included), I wouldn’t trade these few precious years with anything. Now, if The New York Times came knocking with a job offer, that would be another story…

 

Originally published on Sunday Circle Online, 2012.