The guilt of the working mother

Last updated: 25/05/2016 15:31 by AoifeOCarroll to AoifeOCarroll's Blog
Filed under: MummyBloggers
 
I have always worked while rearing my children. For most of those 18 years, I’ve worked from home, but soon I’ll be in an office 20 miles away, and flexitime is not an option.
 
This is of little consequence to the older two, whose awareness of my presence correlates to the supply of clean socks and pizzas in the house.
 
The youngest is an entirely different story, however. This is a girl who tells me she loves me at least once a day, still likes to be tucked in at night and likes nothing better than to settle in for a good mother-daughter baking session.
 
Not surprisingly, she has not taken the news of my new job very well.
 
We went through the “What’s wrong?” “Nothing” game of ping pong for about an hour one evening, before she finally melted into tears and told me how much she was going to miss me when I went out to work.
 
I tried to reassure her that I would be home just a couple of hours after her and she wouldn’t even notice my absence once she starts secondary school in September, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was the worst mother in the world.
 
There was little point in highlighting a study of 50,00 adults in 25 countries published in The New York Times last year, which found that daughters of working mothers spent longer in education, were more likely to have jobs in supervisory roles and earned higher incomes.
 
Nor could I explain to her that being a mother is a pretty expensive business these days and that my Confirmation money ran out some time ago.
 
Nothing was said about the impending change the next day.
 
 
She came home from school, played with the dog in the garden and did dance moves to Taylor Swift.
 
Still nothing about the job.
 
It was then I realised that she had forgotten all about it  - that’s what kids are like.
 
Sure, she will bring it up again, and there will be more tears (hers too!), but she will adjust to the situation and move on. And that’s the way it should be:
 
We all want to support our kids, but we will never do that by showing them that guilt is the mother’s reward for trying to better her family’s situation.
 
Aoife O'Carroll is a separated mum living in Co Kerry with her two boys aged 17 and 14, and a girl aged 10.
 
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