I’ve been crying for hours over the impossible task of what it means to be a working “mother”.
On the very day I was feeling so thankful for what I have, my entire body felt the weight of the grinder.
For the first time in the several years working for this company, I basically was reprimanded for being unable to do it all and more.
As I weep, I think about what that meant. Why finishing staying up into the early hours of the morning my day off instead of the day before when there was no clear due date was such a problem when it got finished anyway?
As the weight of exhaustion hits me, I reflect on the last two weeks where I finally felt like I was able to find the perfect balance between childcare and work.
The hourly cost of a decent babysitter is more than I make, yet I felt the cost was justified as I could handle my morning meetings knowing my kids are looked after and my day would be laid out clearly.
Some days are more productive than others.
Some days I find that after putting the kids down for the night, I can barely think straight, barely focus on the things that are supposed to be done. “I’ll do it tomorrow…” I say. But the next day is unpredictable, as was the day before, because days with young children can never be anything but chaotic.
Some people think, well juggling parenting and working remotely isn’t fair to your employer. But is it fair to an employee to be paid far below a living wage? Is it fair to live in a society where child rearing is made a near impossible task, where there’s no job protected maternity leave, no “village”, a society where mothers are put in impossible positions, get abused and be continually grinded for more out of their exploitative workplaces, or fear the consequences of raising children in dire poverty.
Capitalism is cruel. Your employer doesn’t care if you struggle every day to balance running a home, making sure everyone is healthy and fed and feeling loved, all the while neglecting your physical and mental health while trying to get the work done in impossible timeframes. They don’t care if you’ve been running on 4 hours of sleep for weeks, or that you can’t afford a nanny or even a decent full time day care. They just want you to do it all and more for the least amount of money possible. And if you dare try to humanize yourself and express how hard it all is, how impossible it is to manage it all without family support and limited funds, to the grinder you go and discarded like the rest of the moms who tried and failed to give it their all.