changes are afoot

As I confront returning to work, I've been thinking a lot about how hard it is to be a mother - at least the sort of mother who has any aspirations for herself beyond the flourishing of her family.

It's hard to be a stay at home mother. The extreme division of labor - the roles for mother and father that seem to have such little overlap or flexibility - well, you know, I've talked about this here before. I do find myself looking around every so often, wondering how exactly I got to be a 1950s housewife. The crucial difference being, I suppose, that Mike and I can talk about it and consider together how to find a more satisfying sense of partnership in our relationship. But given our roles, it feels like the deck is stacked against us.

It's hard to be a working mother. I feel a deep attachment to my kids, a need to be with them and care for them. And man oh man, are they are wacko for me too. The kind of clinging to my legs, climbing on my back whenever I squat down to pull something out of a lower cabinet sort of wacko that can drive me batty. But what can you do? There it is. Is it about nursing? Spending nine months inside me? However it happened, they are attached.

I have been feeling ready to return to (part-time) work for months now. I've certainly been looking! But now that work is a concrete possibility, I'm confronting what it will really mean to leave my children in the care of someone else. I've got a bad case of maternal desire, and though it doesn't have to be duking it out with my desire to work outside the home, it sometimes feels that way. The truth is that Gabriel sobs nearly every time I leave the house. He knows something is up these days, but he's kind of always been that way. I feel a deep sorrow, anticipating what we both will go through when we make this change.

Is it worth enduring the pain of separation?

I miss my independence. I resent the way becoming a caregiver for dependent children has turned me into a dependent myself -- financially, certainly, but in other ways too. Every solo trip to the gym, every haircut, every errand that falls between the hours of 5:30 am and 7:30 pm requires some negotiations. (Perhaps this is why the old world abuela system seems to persist. Think of all those abuelas who have spent their entire adult lives as dependent caregivers! There should be World Abuela Day, when everyone is required to not only give grandma the day off, but to bring her to a massage therapist and foot the bill.)

And ugh, resentment can be so corrosive. Mike is an emotionally astute, supportive and caring husband who absolutely wants me to be happy (even if it means giving up homemade bread and all the other perks of having me at home). But his job is terribly demanding and engrossing, and he needs to work a lot. And we don't have an abuela to boss around (thank goodness, dear mother and mother-in-law, that you are not that person in our family!) or an au pair, or a maiden aunt next door, and so it falls on me.

I do believe working will help us balance out our roles and lighten some of those nagging, quiet resentments. Maybe it will send the children clinging to Mike's calves a bit more. Certainly it will reshuffle the family roles in such a way that I feel very good about; as the children get older I am aware that I don't want them thinking this is what men and women are supposed to do. And if I don't want them thinking it, that might suggest I don't want to be doing it myself.

So maternal desire and professional desire need not be battling it out after all! (Have I convinced you? Have I convinced me?) No, really - deep down I know it wll be good for all of us when I have meaningful work that requires me to leave my children for a few hours a week in order to do it. I won't have to ask permission to go. I'll use parts of me that long for exercise and exposure to the open air.

I only wish it didn't have to hurt so much.