Motherhood Sucks

The title says it all. There is very little to enjoy in having so little freedom. For the last months, I've had about 2 hours of free time per day until I have to go to sleep. Sometimes just one hour. Sometimes even that is interrupted by Liisa waking up or Siiri being too hungry to fall asleep. It's horrible.  When I'm in the lab, there is always so much to do and time runs out all too fast. But when I'm at home, I find myself counting hours to bedtime, although I know it won't help because tomorrow is just as bad. Time at home is usually just tasks to keep the children occupied and in schedule, with little quality time and very little sense of freedom.

I'm really not cut out for this. I've had to change my behavior a lot to become more similar to the kind of mother I think I'm supposed to be. When I get angry, my natural response is to get aggressive and expressive, but that's not appropriate for a good mother so I learned to become frustrated in stead.   Then I learned to become passive aggressive and now I've learned to become numb. When Siiri has a tantrum, I shut myself down mentally. I force myself to stay calm. I've also learned new behavior when having conversations with children. By nature, I'm a very frank person. Before, when a child did something unimpressive (e.g. draw an ugly picture or sing badly) and they came to me seeking praise, I just smiled awkwardly and hoped they go away.  Now I have learned to fake emotions much better. I can have repetitive conversations with pretended enthusiasm. How many times can you answer the same questions without resorting to "Who cares?! Besides, I've already told you!". Well, I've answered some questions dozens of times.

Behaving in a way that is unnatural for a person, tends to backfire occasionally. I can spend days and weeks talking with kids in a gleeful manner but every once in a while I suddenly feel like I'm not really a person anymore.  I just do the right tasks with the right emotion at the right time. I get really sad at how little control I have over my own life and needs and wants. I just want to play games on Xbox and I haven't even finished Assassin's Creed Revelations, which we have had for a year already. Mother's aren't really people anyway. They're more like robots with only one objective: raise children well. The same can't be said for fathers. When a child wears dirty clothing, people blame the mother. When Siiri's kindergarten group had a Christmas present vote, 13 parents had eventually voted, none of them fathers. Bunch of women doing what the society expects of them while men get a free pass not to care about such small things.

As progressive and helpful as Erkki is, I still spend more hours at home and I'm in charge of the majority of chores and I get to spend a lot of time with the kids. I'm supposed to be jumping with joy: "YAY, I get to spend hours and hours with my kids" but the less time I'm stuck here babysitting, the more likely I am to do it with honest joy. I sometimes think I would be better at the male role. I'd love to have many children - at least 4, but I don't want to be the one mothering them.  I'd be okay with being a father of 4. Coming home after a busy day at work, greeting the kids, helping out at home and collecting social points for anything I do at home. When a man walks outside with a baby, he gets praise from everyone, if it's a woman, it's just expected of her anyway. It's the same with so many tasks I can't even count them. If the living room floor isn't vacuumed (and is really dirty), it's the wife who is held responsible, even if the husband and wife work equal hours and the vacuuming is the husband's chore. I'm not any better either. When I saw some dust in someone else's home, I suddenly assumed, "she's probably really busy". I'm kind of ashamed that I didn't think "they are busy" or even "he is busy"?

I can't possibly be the only person to hate being confined by all these tiny obligations all the time, but when I googled motherhood and prison, I only found stories of inmates having babies and missing out on wonderful motherhood.  I'm starting to wonder if prisoners have more freedom than mothers! At least they can read books and have their own thoughts and opinions and emotions! If the tasks of motherhood were really written down, I'm sure they would violate all work laws (work and rest time balance, chance to finish a meal, even opportunity to go to the bathroom or to wash up). I suspect, at times, the tasks of motherhood would also violate human rights (not allowed to sleep, being mistreated and screamed at, sometimes even attacked physically). I'm only talking at what the kids do. Erkki is great. Simply, I often wish he was the mother so I had the social right not to notice when Liisa needs new clothes or Siiri needs a picture for kindergarten or the carpet needs to be vacuumed. Because I really would have better things to do, but I can't! I don't have time to spend on myself so I'm becoming less and less of a person. I feel myself disapprearing and my worth decreasing. I used to be an active person, now I just tend to the kids and I'm bad at the obligations that the kindergarten expects of me. I hope I'm not the only MOTHER who hasn't yet sent a picture of Siiri so they can put it in their birthday calendar. OMG, they found yet another task for women to do, so they'd have less attention to think about their work and also another reason to feel like a failure.

Maybe I'm exaggerating with the work laws and human rights, but not by much. It's customary for women to pretend to enjoy spending nearly all "free"   time dealing with kids. I'm tired of it. I'm optimistic when I walk to the lab and I get more and more gloomy when I walk home and think of entertaining kids until it's dinner time and time to put them to bed. Siiri and Liisa are great, except for temper tantrums and such, but it's crazy how much work it is to maintain them! If both me and Erkki are at home with kids for one day, we only get a few hours of time when one of us can take a break. If only one is at home, then there will be moments where it's impossible to get everything done and there isn't a moments rest when even one kid is awake. Besides, there are so many temper tantrums, I've become afraid doing anything with Siiri and I get tense if she even raises her voice a little.  It's sometimes such a struggle not to scream back.

I love my children dearly, but I'm starting to think that it takes a helluva lot of self-brainwashing for a woman to convince herself daily, that motherhood is rewarding and the good times outweigh the bad times. No. Being a mother sucks. It's awful. It's tedious non-stop work, with little benefit. All mistakes being noticed and all successes being attributed to the children. The amount of enjoyment that has to be given up is much greater compared to the positive emotion of seeing a child smile in between her horrible tantrums. Again, I don't regret having children because for me it isn't a full life without family evenings and the possibility of grandchildren. Too bad I had to sacrifice all freedom and myself to live my vision of my perfect life.

PS! During writing this post while kids were in bed and it was my "free time", I was interrupted about 6 times times by kids, mostly by Liisa waking up crying, but also Siiri being "too hungry to sleep" two hours after dinner and also waking up and crying non-stop for nearly 30 minutes because she wanted a piece of paper being thrown in the bin and did not believe that it had already been done.

Edited to add: recommended reading: All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting.