a) yes being at home full time is really tough and an amazing job to do – no pic nick and something which should be congratulated
b) yes there is something exciting and challenging about being at work

but

and I think it is a massive but, I am still my children’s bloody mother all day, still worrying about them and thinking about them and doing things for them as you say ‘full time’. I don’t ‘come home’ to them, to peek-a-bo and nappies – they are always there even if someone else is doing the actual nappy changing and jiggling.

And I get really snarked when I get told, as I often do, that I have something great in terms of a challenge when I go to work, that I get ‘time off’ from my children. I don’t think work is ‘time off’ it is just ‘geographical distance’. I still have all the responsibility of parenting – the metaphors are all off kilter. I don’t stop being a mother because I’m in a conference call – I still have to be doing all the all around thinking about my child and all the bringing up, making decisions big and small, finding ways to entertain and protect them. Nursery doesn’t organise holidays of vaccinations or buy clothes or visit museums or go to the doctors or think about his health long term or make decisions about his welfare outside the very basic. I do that. Because I am my sons’ mother ALL DAY EVERY DAY TOO, even if sometimes I’m in a meeting.

The trouble with full time mum is that it shifts into other insidious areas: a mother who doesn’t work outside the home who I know told me that she was doing ‘the most important job’ for society ‘bringing up’ her children. To my face. As if I am not also doing that whilst also paying flipping taxes.

RANT. x x x