Dear Vix: As a working mother, it feels like I’m being set up to fail – UK Times

Dear Vix,

I love my job, and I’ve worked hard to build a career that fulfills me. But sometimes, it feels like no matter what I do, I’m letting someone down – especially my children. Recently, I missed a school assembly because of an important work commitment and one of my kids was really upset. Seeing her disappointment broke my heart.

I try to be present when I’m home, but moments like this make me question whether I’m failing the people who need me most (or if I’m being set up to fail). How do I balance my ambition with being the mother my kids need? How do I help them understand that just because I can’t always be there doesn’t mean they aren’t my priority? And am I monstrous for admitting that I want it all?

Torn in Two

Dear Torn in Two,

Oh, the plight of the mother. You’re scorned if you don’t work – you’re ignored and belittled; pretty much knocked out of society if you stay at home for those crucial early years – and you’re branded a “monster” if you do.

Pay for a nanny or childminder (or just basic school wraparound care) to focus on your career and you’re “entitled” and “shouldn’t have had kids if you can’t look after them”. Choose to stay at home (or are forced to, given the eye-watering costs of sending them to nursery) and you’re labelled “lazy” or somehow “unserious” or “out of touch with the real world”.

You can’t win. We will never win. The system/the patriarchy (or whatever you want to call it – the “manosphere”, even) simply doesn’t want us to. It can’t risk it. It would be far too empowering if women were allowed to “have it all”. So, yes. Sadly and bluntly, you’re right. You are being set up to fail.

I often think that mothers (particularly those in early motherhood, shortly after birth) walk among us like ghosts. They are hybrid, half-beings who exist in the witching hour between midnight and three. While the world slumbers, they are its rulers. Their power vanishes when daylight begins.

And why is that? Well, because once women split in two, they become gently rounded whispers of milk and maternity. Removed from work, from responsibility, from heavy lifting; they’re not supposed to be “seen”, not really. They are elysian, beatified… at first. Womanhood as they knew it, entirely erased – and so with it all sense of sexuality, individualism and power. And then as soon as they give birth, they are demonised.

Once, a pregnant friend told me she felt “jealous”. “I feel guilty for admitting it,” she whispered. “But sometimes I envy people who don’t have kids.”

I think this sums up the entire issue you’re dealing with at the moment. And it’s why you feel so conflicted about saying it out loud. Mothers, despite being revered – seemingly protected – are kept under strict controls: they’re simply not allowed to be anything but content with their lot. To be angry with the struggle to keep all the plates spinning all the time is to be a “monster”; a skewed line in the narrative that upholds the idea of “family” at all costs. Mothers are the sacrificial lambs of society.

That’s why you feel the way you do. And I don’t blame you – it wouldn’t serve the patriarchy quite so well for you to feel like you were winning.

What to do? Tell your kids you love them, every single day – as many times a day as you can possibly squeeze in. Explain that you want to be able to provide for them – to buy them the birthday presents they desperately want; to put delicious food on the table, to go on the occasional holiday or weekend away. Tell them that you wish you could spend more time with them – of course you do – but that your career is also important. That it enables you to provide for them. That you will go to every single assembly and school play you possibly can.

Help them to grow up understanding that yes, you are a mother – but you are also a person. An individual – with all the same dreams, passions and pressures as any father (or anyone who’s child-free).

Take heart that you’re an excellent role model for your daughters. They will learn from your ambition and your struggle. They’ll be grateful and in awe that you showed them how hard it was; how hard you were working for them – and for yourself. When they’re grown, they’ll look back and be proud to have known a woman like you. The woman that helped them become.

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