I knew what I wanted to do with my life from childhood. However, it wasn’t a socially acceptable choice so I didn’t admit it.
When I left school, I did an Arts degree because it was expected that I would go to university and studying would buy me time to figure out an acceptable career path to follow. After university, I worked the kinds of jobs an Arts degree leads to (jobs that don’t require a degree) then eventually went back to train as a primary school teacher. Teaching was as close as I could get to my dream. I committed myself fully to my students but it was a very demanding job and a distant second to what I really wanted to be doing.
What I really wanted was to be a mother. And a stay-at-home mother at that.
I couldn’t envision myself doing anything else.
Like costumes from a hire shop, the various jobs I had never seemed to fit me and were uncomfortable to wear.
In this ladder-climbing, productivity-optimising. money-oriented world we live in, I’ve always sat firmly at the other end of the spectrum to most. I’m not ambitious for these things and I couldn’t make myself care about them.
I am blessed to now be a mother but it’s definitely not cool to tell my truth - that I finally feel fulfilled. Instagram is awash with posts about the grind of motherhood. The mothers who post are trying to show that motherhood is work so should be valued but they also portray motherhood as monotonous, unsatisfying and a sacrifice of self. Those who do post sunny, smiley images from their day with their children are accused of being inauthentic. To most, it’s unfathomable that they could genuinely be enjoying motherhood.
I haven’t loved it all - the baby months were tough - but, on the whole, I have loved motherhood. I value the way motherhood has grown me too. It hasn’t been only dirty nappies, sleep routines and taxiing my boys between activities. My capacities for patience, curiosity, empathy, creativity and other life-enriching qualities have all deepened through being a mother.
But these things aren’t valued by society. Perhaps this is most clearly demonstrated by people’s reactions when they ask me, “So, what do you do?” When my boys were younger and I told them I was a stay-at-home parent, most people lost interest almost immediately - as if I couldn’t possibly have the intelligence to hold a decent conversation or anything of value to say. I felt dismissed. Now that my boys are older, I work part-time in our family business. I lean on this to answer the dreaded question but I don’t regard that work as my main occupation.
I find it worrying that it’s not considered enough to care for and raise the children that I brought into the world.
It’s okay for women to have children, but we can’t care for them ourselves. (However, it is acceptable to underpay other women to do the job.)
I was once interviewed for a popular motherhood blog. They asked about the opportunities women have these days and how I juggle it all. “I don’t”, I said and explained that I wasn’t so enamored with the idea of “having it all” because that meant doing it all. The interview never got published.
Women who choose not to have children are in a similar spot. When strangers find out that a woman is childfree by choice, it’s not her intelligence that they assume isn’t up to par but her ability to care for others. Aren’t women meant to be selfless and nurturing?
Society doesn’t want women to be stay-at-home mothers yet we’re expected to prove that our hearts pump with real blood by having children.
There are a million ways for a person to care for others without having children and nearly eight billion people in this world who need caring for in various ways. I point this out not because women should have to prove their willingness and ability to care but because all the ways people care for others who are not their children are important and needed too.
In regard to the women who are childfree by choice, I think it’s loving and wise to recognise that motherhood is not for you and so to make the choice not to pursue it. Stepping out of the social current that drags women into motherhood by default takes intention and strength. What is selfish is to have a child just because it’s the next thing to do when you’re not actually in a good position to meet a child’s emotional or physical needs.
In conclusion, society’s stance is this: we must want to be mothers - but not too much.
Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.
Despite progress made by women before us to create opportunities outside of the home, expectations on us are still very particular and narrow. Staying “in our place” at home is no longer the ideal, our place now is straddling both the worlds of work and home. A foot in each place, it’s difficult to get the balance right and people have no qualms voicing their judgements of how a woman is doing while she wobbles unsteadily, doing her best with limited support. Many women run themselves ragged trying to do it all and not all of them are chasing their own dream.
Women who’ve chosen not to do the juggle and instead to focus on one thing are judged negatively. Whether it be motherhood or work (or something else) that they’ve committed themselves to, people believe that they’re missing out and not doing enough.
I deeply value the struggle previous generations of women went through for our benefit today but I see the gains they made a little differently to most. For me, their efforts don’t make it an obligation to do it all but to make an intentional choice. Choice is the thing that the women before us didn’t have. Now that we have choice, it’s our job to make all choices acceptable, all women accepted.
What’s true for you?
(Prompts for your journal or the comments)
What resonated with you and what ruffled you as you read this piece?
In what ways do you see women being judged for the choices they’ve made around motherhood?
How could you validate and support a woman in your life who has made choices different from your own?
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Isn't it interesting that you and I both chose the ends of the motherhood spectrum, rather than to live in the more common, more acceptable middle. It seems that whichever choice a woman makes, judgement and misunderstanding from others is inevitable. Thanks for speaking up for us all. xx
Brilliant piece Julie! You know I agree with everything you said here 💛