I have to say, if I saw the role of "parent" being advertised on a job-seeking platform, I’d just scroll right on past.
The working conditions are appalling - we’re talking gruelling 24-hour shifts with few breaks, if any, and a decent chance of being hit in the face by excrement. Oh, and sick leave? Please, forget about it! Yet somehow, it's a job I absolutely love, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world.
It’s okay not to love every bit of your job, even if that job happens to be parenting. And it’s possible for two rival truths to exist at the same time. In fact, parenting can be best summed up as a bag chock-full of contradictions (with something sticky at the bottom that has somehow gotten all over everything).
Watch: Superwoman is dead. Post continues below.
I could write a novel filled with all the wonderful things I have to say about being a mum. But there’s no denying that it’s bloody tough. And I find that when we make space for the filthy, beautiful mess of it all, and know that ALL of it is okay, then even the crappiest days become that much more bearable.
1. Motherhood is very hard work. Like, really hard.
You might be thinking, "Well yeah, duh, no one’s saying it isn’t". But as much progress as we’ve made creating safe spaces for mothers to talk openly about the tough stuff, there is still a pervasive belief that we should simply be able to handle it. The "Quit complaining, you chose this" attitude is still alive and well, and it lives next door to, "You should be grateful you even have a child to complain about". A lot of us still carry the pressure to be superwoman, juggling it all and doing it well, and that’s not by accident - we’re surrounded by the superwoman myth everywhere we look.