Maybe having a kid is not that bad. I tend to get stuck with thoughts about having a pile of obligations - laundry, dishes, kid's parties, dusting, vacuuming, etc. I keep thinking in terms that I will start to take care of the household like a good little house wife. And when I think of it, it troubles me - that's so not me. 
Lately it somehow starts to sink in. Whenever I see undone dishes, I think, "I'll make a bad housewife if I don't do the dishes today."
Well, today I realized something - it's the 21st century! I'm well-educated and I have a job in science. My value isn't measured with my ability to be a good house wife.
It's definitely a plus to be good at everything and to excel at every aspect of life, and I think it would make me a worse person if I was a total slob, but I have to stop thinking that a mother - an ex-vessel of children - is the same thing as a good lil' house wife. I mean, in a marriage, I'm the one who's supposed to give birth, right? And breast-feed kids if unless I have a problem with it. But it doesn't automatically make me the person forever responsible for feeding the kids and doing their laundry and making sure they take a bath often enough and that they brush their teeth and so on. I don't really see how those are linked - why does the ability to raise a kid from two cells make me responsible for making sure they do their home-work. I have a point here, don't I? 
I had a flash of insight about the future, which is how I got inspiration for the thoughts I'm having. I saw myself eagerly playing a new computer game - running around in the pseudo-medieval world of RPGs, killing monsters and collecting loot.
Suddenly a 9 year old boy walks in the room, looks at me and sighs, "moooooom, I'm hungry." I am unable to take my eyes off the computer the first moment and tell him, "Mhmh, I think we have some leftovers from yesterday." and he says, "no, I checked." "Oh, then we do need new food. OK, in a moment...", still unable to stop slaying the monsters in the game. "Mom, pfffff, save the game already." "OK, OK... Ah, but I'm so close to the next level." He gives me a LOOK. 
I give in, "OK, I saved it." 
Then I get up from the computer, he smiles victoriously, I go to the kitchen with him and we quickly make food together so that I can go back to my game and he gets fed.That thought really made me smile.
Just because I have kids I won't change into an always-responsible mother, but my children will know me well and they will accept me with all my strengths and weaknesses. They won't assume that I'm the cleaning lady and the cook who never makes mistakes, but they will know that I do try to be helpful whenever possible. Having obligations won't make me stop me from getting excited about hobbies I like, but it won't matter because it's not assumed of me. And my kids will learn to occasionally tell me, "mom, you need you to run the washing machine today, I need this shirt clean by tomorrow."It's also something that Diana said in a forum,
Kids are great. They don't look at you like you're crazy (too much) when you start belting out "Jeremiah was a bullfrog!" while eating dinner, and instead join in. They like to go places and try new things. They're not afraid of much, and don't have the tired old excuses that older people have. If you start running and doing cartwheels, they will too, rather than staring at you with open mouths.
You don't have to be anyone else's idea of what a mom should be, and that's awesome, because then you can develop a real relationship with your own kids that's unique and amazing. They'll get to actually know you and your personality and see your life, not the caged in life many would like to see you adopt.
That's what my vision was really about. My future son will look at me playing a computer game and he'll think that mom is just having her computer game phase. He won't start whining at the kitchen table that no one is feeding him. He will know that all he has to do is ask.
And if he can get some leftovers from the refrigerator it's probably less trouble than convincing me to get off the computer. This is also a good time to post a quote I heard a couple of days ago:
Kids are always as tough job as the parents can handle. They're not easier and they're not more difficult.
This is something to remember. I will be raising my kids and they will be just as independent or troublesome as I can handle. They won't assume that I will do things that I have never been good at. But they won't mind because I also have my strengths and some of those can be very helpful and some of them will be things that I'm better at than most other moms.
OK, I'll go do the dishes now because it's only fair as my husband Erkki already took out the trash and he did the dishes yesterday! I definitely don't want to be a horrible slob undoing my husband's tidy nature.
LOL. Aahh.. that's what's been troubling you. In my case - and I only have myself and my family to use as references here - if motherhood is measured by dishes washed and house kept clean, then I am a lousy mother. Indeed. My best investments have so far been dishwasher and a woman who comes and cleans my house every once or twice a week. And I think it is all fair. As my mother-in-law constantly refers - in Estonian time (the first republic,20-40s to those ignorant in term :p) every woman having a full time job on the teacher level or above, had a helping hand in household. That was simply acceptable and normal. I am highly educated professional working in university and thus, I am allowed to have a helper in housekeeping matters. I don't need help in cooking, but I like to eat out regularly (and don't let anyone tell you that once you have a kid, you can't eat out as restaurants will ban you - NOT TRUE) and I hate cleaning. I hated that before I became a mother and it hasn't changed. Luckily we have a solution that seems to work for everyone at the moment. The house is not spic-and-span clean, but it is ok. And my family joins in both in cooking (especially my son) and cleaning (especially my husband). So mother does not equal housewife!
ReplyDeleteAnd I am a moderately good mother to my son.
Dishwasher is also my first investment when we move into an apartment where we can fit one. And also a washing machine with a drier. I mean, it feels pretty pointless to hang all my socks neatly and later collect them... It already takes more time than I'd be willing to give. Once I start having a large pile of tiny kids clothes, it will become way too tedious. I already think that I'll probably get a net and just scatter wet baby clothes on it. Once I have a drier, I can just take out fresh clean laundry, fold and put away.
ReplyDeleteAn occasional house-keeper sounds like a good idea. Otherwise it will be an obligation that I treat as my personal task. Dusting and vacuuming every once in a while is ok by me, but there's plenty of small things that take so much time and people barely notice the result. e.g. scrubbing off oil splatter from around the stove.