I just want motherhood to matter. And not just alongside all parenting in general, but the work of mothering in particular.
We all know that mothers are the glue that holds society together, yet motherhood continues to be the most undervalued and overly exploited role in our country. WHY??!!
I woke up today with so much anxiety around this fact coupled with the fact that I need to hurry up and get some money flowing back into my life with some of my “professional” work all the while I am constantly working at my job of motherhood which never counts in the world of financial value except to just drain my bank account, in all honesty.
The interesting thing is that my work has “value” when I need to hire it out with a babysitter or a housecleaner. And, hell, these positions demand $20-35/hr where I live!
But if I do these things myself, as we moms regularly do, they always feel somehow unworthy of my time. Because if I can be making more money doing something else, then that is what I should be doing (or so that is what I have been made to believe).
And then I see the local nanny posting a day in her life in a reel on Instagram, and I swear it is many a mothers’ dream… to have the time to actually be able to spend with their kids guilt free in a fantasyland of kiddo activities.
And she is getting paid to do that…I even pay her $25/hr to do that with my kids sometimes (including just driving them around napping)!
But if I take my kids to the park, set up playdates and homeschool activities, run 15 errands getting them in and out of the car, drive them around until they fall asleep…somehow none of this counts as work. And I damn sure don’t get compensated for any of it even though it takes up most of my day!
Of course, it counts to me and my husband and my children, and sure, I get paid in hugs and kisses and the satisfaction that I am doing a great job of mothering. I am just so tired of the work of mothering not really counting to society unless I pay someone else to do it all the while knowing that I have to do this job first and foremost regardless of what else I might need or want to do.
But because we all know that you can’t pay your bills in hugs and kisses, I also can’t just be a mother, either, despite the fact that our society is still built on the assumption that I can.
Most of the time I flow with this reality and accept it for what it is (as do all mothers, I assume). But there are moments when I just can’t deal with this outdated inequality in a relaxed manner when it rears its ugly head from time to time.
Like the other day when my husband’s boss expected him to work late last minute with the inconsiderate assumption that he wouldn’t have any other responsibilities to tend to because he has a wife.
Yet I had somewhere to be at a certain time and was counting on him to take over the household at his normal arrival time so that I could go teach a new class without having to drag our children along. So then it became a battle of the fact that him working overtime was going to bring us more money than me teaching my dance class, so his work was deemed more important regardless of the fact that these activities were not supposed to be pitted against each other.
It’s like I am always supposed to be available to drop everything to default to my mothering role, yet it is still not expected that this should be going the other way around, too. WTF?!?!
We all know that mothering (and fathering!) is a job and one that we all rely on societally whether we realize or acknowledge that fact or not, yet when are we going to collectively incentivize it or at least offer a parenting credit to those who are in the midst of it? I feel like this is especially important for mothers since we STILL do the bulk of the parenting work and often while holding down our own careers these days.
The bottom line is that I just want the important work of mothering to actually matter! And I want to genuinely be compensated for it somehow so that I can invest my time into it without the guilt, without the frustration, without the worry, and without the feeling of dread I face everyday of needing to justify my mothering time against the 1000 other potential tasks beckoning my attention, most of which are promising to pay me in actual dollars in exchange.
And this is my WHY behind Rhythm Goddess.
The goal in creating this business is to empower women and give us the support and collective strength we need to face these modern mothering challenges. One day I also hope to be able to inspire even greater change on a national level to help get moms the financial support they need in at least the form of paid maternity leave for the first year postpartum which we still do not have in the USA. This is important for all of us living in this pro-life but not pro-mom world.
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