The Conundrum February 8, 2005
I didn’t see this article in yesterday’s Age until I followed the link on Loobylu. It, and the letters that have followed it, are very interesting.
Mark Cleary basically says that parenting is something we do because we have to. That it is
an incredibly mind-numbing, energy-sapping and, for the most part, banal experience
and, of course, there’s a letter writer who disagrees.
From where I stand I feel as though I can see both points of view. I spend my days alternately wishing I been able to stay home with Finn for longer and relieved that I’m not the one who has to listen to the toddler scream while I’m in the toilet. On the one hand I’m terribly jealous of the colleague who has just returned to work after 18 months off (she went on leave a month before me and came back a year after me) and on the other I’m terribly glad that I wasn’t at home with Finn yesterday afternoon. I know I would find being at home mind-numbing, energy-sapping and banal, but I also know that I would love bits of it.
This is the conundrum of parenthood, I think. That whichever model we employ, there will always be aspects of another that we will crave.
I had a similar conversation about work with a friend on the weekend. She has been going from temp assignment to temp assignment for the last six months. She says when she’s at home, she wishes she was at work. She feels guilty that she’s not a contributing member of society or her household. When she’s at work, she thinks longingly of all the time she had to herself at home when she wasn’t working. The problem seems to be not with the situation itself, but with our expectations of ourselves and the way we have set up these various models to work in the first place.
I must admit I found the initial article a bit bleak and negative. It is not super-wonderful like a greeting card to be at home. But it is not soul destroying either. It is just life and not all that different to life with a paying job (from what I remember).
Every now and then I wish I could go to work and just spend a little time with a cranky boy but it’s only now and then.
I think both roles are tough but life’s like that.
i read that one - i think he’s just over-reacting to the myth. some kids can certainly be soul destroying if you don’t know how to cope, but there are lots of little gems that help you along the way