What's wrong with being a full-time mother?
Did you ever think about becoming a mother when you were starting your studies at university or vocational training? I didn't. There was plenty of time for that in the future. First of all, I had to become an engineer, get a good job, get promoted to a good position and, if I became a mother, it would not interfere with my professional career. However, never say never...
Several years later, I found myself crying as I left my eleven-month-old son (also crying) in kindergarten. I felt like a bad mother for not taking care of him myself. I felt like a bad professional for not being employed in a paid job yet (for reasons that are not relevant now, I decided to quit my job in the corporate world shortly before I became pregnant). And, of course, I felt bad about what people might think of me, whatever I decided to do.
Have you ever felt like that? Well, we're probably not the only ones. According to the 2011 Survey of Mothers in Europe (you can read it here), of all the mothers surveyed, almost 80% wanted to take full-time care of their baby under 1 year old and it still stood at 61% for ages 1 to 3. But then, what's wrong with full-time mothering, if it seems that many women want to do so?
When you become a mother, or think about becoming one, these two questions tend to come up:
Should you return to the paid labour market as soon as possible and pursue your career goals (as if you had never been a mother), or
Should you take a leave and stay at home to care for your baby (as if you don't care about your career)?
And while both options are perfectly valid, and neither should be penalised, I was missing the in-between choice. "Well, you can't have everything in life". Oh, can't you? Well, then we'll have to change the paradigm.
As ecofeminism says, we are eco-dependent and interdependent beings. We cannot live with our backs turned to our dependence on nature, but neither can we live as if we did not depend on the care of other people, especially at certain times of life, such as childhood.
There is nothing wrong with full-time mothering. It is work, it is necessary, and it has social, economic and emotional value. This was one of mowom's starting points. But not the only one, because... What about the problem of gender roles and co-responsibility?
👉We encourage you to follow us and get to know this project, this movement, better. In the next posts we will continue to share with you what brought us here and what we want to achieve. In the meantime, what has been your experience in choosing (or not) between motherhood and career?
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