I should know better than to immerse myself in controversy on the good ol’ Internet. God knows I’ve been online long enough to know that. But this time I can’t seem to help myself.
Today I read this entry which essentially says that a mother who works from home is just fluff and can’t compare to working outside the home where you have to deal with daycare drop-offs and pick-ups, traffic during the commute, working for people who don’t give a shit if you have a sick kid at home, blablabla. It was justified by the fact that she currently works out of the home AND from home. She added this:
There is no comparison. None. I don’t care how high up on the blogging ladder you are: working from home is not even in the same realm as being a Working Mother.
(Emphasis is hers.)
You know what? I’m not going to pretend to know what she’s talking about as far as daycare and commutes. I’ve worked outside the home before, of course. I worked in fast food, in (God help me, and please let me never do it again) technical support for two different ISPs, and a music studio. I dealt with the traffic, the long commutes, and with the exception of the studio which was more like a small family than a workplace, I dealt with bosses and shareholders who didn’t give two shits about what was going on in your personal life no matter how major it was.
The thing is, I’ve never done all those things with children. I’ve never had to race frantically to pick my children up from daycare before the cut-off time where you have to pay a late fee. I’ve never had to argue with George as to whose job is most important today and which one of us “has” to stay home with a sick kid. I’ve never had to whisper on the phone, trying to hide that I’m calling home to see if someone’s fever has broken. I’ve never been bawled out for taking too many days off or running late or other such things because of my kids. I’ve never had to try to cram an entire day’s worth of fun and love into the two hours between arriving home and the kids’ bedtime.
I’m sure it’s hard. And that’s the difference. I will FULLY acknowledge that it must be extremely hard. I don’t know how I would handle it all with younger kids. Maybe with older kids in school full-time it gets easier, though I’m betting it’s not. But just based on the way life is with my kids right now at age 3 and age 6 I just can’t imagine having to spend eight hours in an office plus commuting time, and then dealing with all the things I listed above (not to mention the things I haven’t listed because I can’t even fathom them).
But here’s the thing: Just because one person’s life of working outside the home can be hard, it doesn’t automatically make everyone else’s situation easy. It doesn’t mean it can’t compare. I think I would be less offended if the original post had said that in HER experience, HER work at home didn’t compare in any way to HER work in the office. But to make a grand sweeping statement that includes all of us is unfair.
When I first started blogging for b5 media, yeah, you could definitely say that my work life was easy because it was a very small time commitment. It’s three years later though, and my freelancing has grown a whole lot and now my day is really packed. On an average school day I get up and take Hayley to school, then I get Breanna breakfast, get her started on her day (which usually involves dinosaurs), get started on my own work, and then it’s literally an endless juggling act of trying to keep up with my commitments for a variety of different bosses, keeping Breanna happy and entertained and fed, getting Hayley from school, helping her with homework, remembering to occasionally get the wet clothes into the dryer so I don’t have to wash them for a third time in a row, make dinner, clean up, do baths, do bedtime, and then…
… well then I’d like to put my feet up and watch television or read a book, but usually I’m back at the laptop finishing all the things I couldn’t complete while the kids were still up and about. Last week I even wrote over here about my fear of how I’m going to handle it all when summer hits for real and I have two kids at home with me, how I’ll get everything done without missing out on the fun while also avoiding having to work until 3 am each night to get it all done.
Some days it’s so ridiculously smooth and easy that I practically laugh and I love my life. Some days I feel so incompetent and hate myself and my work and what I’m trying to do so badly that I want to run screaming out the door and not come back until I have a job somewhere outside the four walls that surround me much of the day and night.
Just like anyone.
My job isn’t easy and my job isn’t hard. It’s all relative to ME and MY life. My job is harder than someone’s I’m sure but I’m not even going to try to pick an example because there are probably days that that person’s job sucks hard and they wish they could do something as “easy” as what I do. Meanwhile, although I feel like my job is hard sometimes, it’s certainly not as hard as, say, someone on the front lines in Iraq or someone working for the FBI who defuses bombs for a living.
And I’m not even going to get into the poor stay at home mom who gets slammed for not contributing financially in ANY way because they don’t work for pay at all, never mind that they typically bust their ass all day taking care of kids and keeping their home in shape and making up for the finances in countless ways. I’ve been there too and the vitriol can be nasty.
It all comes down to this: We all have hard days. Our jobs – whether they’re outside the home, in our living room, or unpaid – are easy and hard depending on the day, the kids, the time, the life we’re currently living. We can all complain about how hard life is, and it’s our right to do that, but please for the love of God, stop comparing.
Because – just like I said in a comment on the original post – all this stupid moronic fighting about who has it hardest does is it provides fodder for the parts of the internet that thinks Mom bloggers are all a bunch of idiots. All it does is take women down a notch by making us fight amongst ourselves instead of standing in solidarity. Instead of saying that someone else’s life is so much easier and yours is so hard, why not just say, “hey man, I had a really fucking hard time this week” and let us all stand together and SUPPORT you, and then when someone else has a bad week you can do the same. If we all supported each other as much as we tear each other down we’d be a whole lot better off (except for the people who earn a living by writing books about the Mommy Wars; they probably wouldn’t be better off if we all got along!).
For God’s sake, after all this bullshit fighting all these years, can’t we all just GET ALONG for while?
(For what it’s worth, the original post references another post as well – I’d like you to go read that one too, because Miss Zoot explains how hard it is to be a mom working outside the home WITHOUT alienating and belittling an entire demographic of working mothers who do fluff work at home. THAT post is fantastic.)
I may regret this post in the morning. I don’t have time to regret it right now because I have to go help my daughter with a ludicrous amount of homework for a grade one child, while simultaneously washing dishes, entertaining Breanna, prepping a chicken for dinner, and trying to get at least one more work task out of the way before the bedtime rush starts. OMG MY LIFE IS SO MUCH HARDER THAN YOURS! Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
which is not a formal book really, it’s actually her journal notes during her first missions with the UNHCR when she went to Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Ecuador. Because of that, the writing is occasionally scattered, but not necessarily in a bad way – just that, because she was writing a few sentences here and there throughout her day what you get instead of flowery prose is raw emotion and blunt honesty about what the refugees are facing day after day after day. It’s a stunning read. I’m only about 45 pages in, but I only started it last night. I don’t think it will take me long to finish because it’s just fascinating.