I was on national radio when the words “Mummy, I need a poo-ooo” assaulted my (and the nation’s) ears. This time, my toddler had waited for me to be on a live broadcast to announce she needed me. But it wasn’t the first time I had felt upstaged and mortified by motherhood.
One of the many unspoken rules of being a parent is that you must maintain high levels of professionalism at all times. While it’s cool to be a slummy mummy, it’s also emphatically uncool to point out that mothers who work have several responsibilities that can’t always be compartmentalised.
My embarrassment did not come from any sense of propriety – I’m more puerile than I have any right to be at my age. My apology to the radio host was entirely reflexive, as if to say: “Sorry that there’s evidence that I have children who I love, but please know I’m a consummate professional.” Once my mortification had ebbed, I could see the funny side. My daughter has impeccable comic timing.
But I felt horrible afterwards. I was ashamed that I had apologised for my child behaving like a child – albeit a defecating one. If a colleague had interrupted me while I was mid-interview, I would have apologised to the host for the interruption – not for the colleague. Probably because I wouldn’t feel judged for being associated with them.
For a lot of women in heterosexual relationships, there remains a chasmic gender imbalance in unpaid and parental labour. Studies support what we whinge about to our pals: mums do more. According to data from Mortar Research, 12 out of 13 parenting tasks usually fall to mothers. There are always exceptions, of course, but they are exceptions, not the norm.
My own wearing of two (spectacularly different) hats makes me irritable with my children and a touch manic when I work. The levels of self-chastisement should I make a typo when I’m desperately trying to hit a deadline can only be described as unhealthy. It is also near-impossible to relax or switch off once the work day is over, because there is no switching off when you have children.
I have found myself trying to fit in work around nap times and Beavers’ drop-offs. I call on my own mother when I need my children to be invisible, in order to avoid another interview interruption. I’ve also resorted to dispensing beige snacks and breaking the screen time rules I created, just to keep my kids occupied while I work.
There is an expectation, society-wide, that parents won’t let their decision to procreate serve as an impediment to their paid work. It is easier to pull this off if you can afford to pay for childcare and help in the house. I have felt this undercurrent of snobbery at times – the idea that you should be earning enough to outsource the relevant areas of your life. An admission of juggling is an admission that you are doing it all yourself through necessity.
But after the radio incident, I started noticing just how often I apologised for my children and how unfair that was – to them and to me. I have typed slightly over-caffeinated “disclaimers” on emails, declaring that I have three of them at home during the day but I’ll work extra hard so that it’s undetectable. I have apologised for my limited availability during business hours, as if an all-seeing professional eye could deduce I was unavailable because I was caring for my offspring, rather than being in such high demand for being good at what I do.
While working on this piece after putting the kids to bed, I had to pause to investigate who had dribbled all over the bathroom floor. I am sanitising the situation to make myself sound like a better parent: someone had been spitting on the lino.
But I won’t apologise for them any more. I’ve had to really police myself, and even in finalising the edits for this article I resisted the urge to drop everything. Instead, I gave myself the weekend (to be a parent helper at Cubs camp: no sleep, lots of small people) rather than attempt that preferred and loathsome euphemism: “the juggle”.
With a naivety that rivals my son’s faith that I can create an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom birthday cake, would it be too much to ask for the professional world to cut us some slack? And for us to cut ourselves some slack and quit grimace-growling “I’m fine” when it’s all rather a lot to be getting on with?
We are not letting working mothers off by recognising that they are probably doing the lion’s share of parenting. We should also be kinder to each other, rather than being hard-nosed because no one gave us any help when we were going through it.
From now on, I have decided I’m not sorry for my motherhood. I won’t apologise any more for having kids and wanting a career too.
I have children. They’re loud and I’m incredibly proud.
Emma Armstrong is a freelance writer and the author of I Used to Think Vegans Were Dicks
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