By AMY GESENHUES
After being on maternity leave for the past several weeks, I’ve decided that “working mom” may be the most redundant phrase in our vernacular.
Working moms. Stay-at-home moms. Moms who work outside of the home.
All moms work. And if they’re “stay-at-home” moms, then there is a good chance that they are working harder than anybody else. I’m a mom who “works outside of the home.” Which is also a funny little phrase, as if all of the time spent in my house is filled with watching television and reading celebrity magazines. The truth is that the work I perform outside of my home as a marketing director is not nearly as exhaustive as the work I do inside my home (and it comes with a better paycheck).
When I’m at my full-time job, I can close my office door to get something done without being interrupted. There is not one door in my house that I can close to keep from being distracted by the people who I report to (these people being my kiddos). In fact, the majority of my job is being at their every beckoning call. Since my at-home bosses include a newborn and a 5-year-old, I don’t have the luxury of delegating different tasks or telling them to do it themselves. My 5-year-old can’t do a load of laundry, and my newborn isn’t going to burp himself.
I’ve been on maternity leave from my 9-to-5 job since Oct. 13. I’m fortunate; my CEO has allowed me to stay at home to be with my new babe and ease back into my work on my schedule. The idea of leaving my brand new boy with someone else during the day is not an option I want to take right now. Eventually, he will join his sister in daycare when I decide to return to my full-time job on a full-time basis.
There is not one minute I spend at home with my children that I regret. Of course, I wouldn’t turn down the offer to have a live-in nanny either. Being a full-time mom can wear you out. It wears me out more so than any work I have ever done outside of my home. Not every moment at home is spent staring down at their sweet angelic faces. Some moments are spent wiping spit-up out of my hair. Yesterday, my 5-year-old threw up twice. Both times in our kitchen. Both times on the floor.
Sometimes, when my newborn has been fed, has a clean diaper, and has no interest in doing anything but crying, I think about the solitude of my office job. I remember how nice it was to have only one task at a time. Sure the work I do that comes with a paycheck includes multiple projects that need to be completed with deadlines, but rarely do I have to do more than one project simultaneously. Today I breastfed my son while brushing my 5-year-old’s teeth.
No one I work with at my 9-to-5 gig cries until I pick them up. Not once has anyone asked me to fix them lunch; and they definitely haven’t asked me to fix them something else because they don’t want the soup and grilled cheese I already made for them. There is not one person at my office who only takes naps if I’m holding them. Nobody at the office makes me listen to the “Mamma Mia” soundtrack over and over and over again if I have to drive them somewhere. On the other hand, no one at my office tells me I’m the best [mommy] ever, in the whole wide world. And that’s more valuable than any end-of-year bonus.
Right now, my work situation is predominately dominated by a newborn. Soon, my work will be split between this work that happens inside of my home (the endless childrearing tasks that are completed day-in, day-out, nighttime, morning, afternoon, and all other minutes of the day) and the work I do outside of my home. I’ll go from being a stay-at-home mom to a mom who works outside of the house.
No matter what category I fit into, my workload is steady. The pay-off may be different and the projects may or may not include peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but the choice to do either is mine. I am no less a mom when I work outside of the house; and I am still hard at work when I stay at home.
