Choices

So long time no post, things have been a bit manic in this household of late. Myself and both kids are sick again, just colds this time but the chunky monkey is back to 2 hourly feeds at night again which is exhausting to say the least, so I haven’t had a lot of time to get a post together. In fact it’s taken me an entire day to write these first few lines so goodness knows when I’ll actually get this posted.


We’ve decided it’s necessary for me to go back to work, hopefully it won’t be for long, maybe 6 months at most until the business is making enough money for Big Daddy to draw a decent wage. That being said I’m not entirely happy about it, to be honest I’m not even a little bit happy about it. Luckily my job pays high enough casual rates for me to only have to work weekends in order to pull in nearly as much as I did working full time before I took maternity leave but I’m still being a sook about it. Chunky Monkey is only four and half months old and is a pretty needy baby he nurses every 2 hours still and doesn’t like to be set down for very long and doesn’t really sleep during the day so it’s going to be difficult for Big Daddy at home with both him and the Mighty Midget. My work place also isn’t an ideal set up for a breastfeeding mum to pump and there’s not a lot that they can do about that. I’m a specialist youth worker at a residential treatment facility for high and complex needs young people and part of our role is constant supervision, our young people cannot be left unsupervised even for a short amount of time. We are often short staffed which means it’s common to do an entire 8 hour shift without even getting into the office for a toilet break if the clients are unsettled. I’ve made it clear that there needs to be someone around at all times to relieve me so I can pump at least once during my shift so I really really hope that they strive to maintain this.

I’ve received mixed reactions from female friends when I’ve talked about my desire to be a SAHM if we can afford it. People seem to assume that because I do have a tertiary education and a career that my priority would be to maintain that. In fact some think I’m mad for wanting to ‘throw away all those years of hard work’. They’re even more shocked and in some cases a little disgusted even when they hear that I’m happy to cook and clean and be with the kids while Big Daddy runs the business. It’s like I’m a traitor, I’m taken feminism backwards, the suffragettes fought so that women could have it all blah blah blah. I wonder if any other women in my position feel oppressed by feminism, by the pressure to ‘have it all’. What does ‘having it all’ even mean? What if to me ‘having it all’ means having the financial freedom to play with my kids all day, to be able to do the school run, practice my cooking and shower the man I love with care and affection? What if I would like to perfect the art of being a domestic goddess? (I’m far from achieving this BTW) Society seems to have a pretty negative view of SAHM’s, like they’re not quite as motivated and/or intelligent as us ‘career women’. It’s almost like the whole reverse racism phenomena, we’ve worked so hard to prove that we can do everything men can do and more and now there’s this incredible pressure to measure up and do EVERYTHING and the majority of that pressure comes from other women.

These women need to remember that the ‘Feminist’ movement was a fight for choice, and to be treated equally and equitably when we make those choices. For the record I choose to do whatever is best for my family, when I made the choice to become a mother I made a choice to change my priorities. So right now what’s best for my family is for me work, and when we can afford it what’s best for my family will be for me to be at home and being involved in my kids lives and educations, perhaps I can revisit the career aspirations when they get older, I am only 25 after all. On the other hand I quite like the idea of being a lady of luxury ;).