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The Best Most Awful Job
1. Only you get to decide whether you want children…
Having children is your choice. Not having children is a perfectly valid decision. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: not your family, not your friends, and certainly not complete strangers on the internet.
2. …but many of us don’t get to choose
There is nothing remotely fair about the vagaries of fertility. So many of us carry hidden grief for the babies we couldn’t have. The world is scattered with mothers whose children are invisible. We forget them too often.
3. There’s no right way of doing it….
There are as many different ways to raise children as there are parents. Most of them work just fine. For many us, it’s not even a choice: we do what our child needs, and what we can bear.
4. …but someone will always think you’re doing it wrong
From the first moment that a stranger stopped me in Marks and Spencer to poke into my pram and ask if I was breastfeeding (I wasn’t), I learned that I was under public scrutiny. A week later, I was told off by a woman for dressing my baby in green. After that, I realised that it was none of their business and went about my day.
5. It brings some dark moments…
Let’s say it out loud: motherhood brings periods of loneliness, isolation, desperation, despair, fury, and anxiety. We have to stop pretending that these feelings are somehow unusual, and start giving parents permission to share their experiences without questioning their love for their children.
6. …and the joys aren’t always what you’d expect
School plays and birthday parties leave me cold, but watching my son try his first piece of chewing gum is a highlight of my entire life so far. Parenting is full of strange, unexpected peak experiences like this.
7. Sometimes the responsibilities feel overwhelming…
It’s the one job you can’t skive, the one date you can’t cancel. The buck truly stops with you. The first time you catch the flu and still have to look after a small child is a true moment of realisation.
8. …but it can be liberating, too
I, for one, have quite enjoyed the opportunity to say no to boring social events (sorry, no childcare!), to give up pretending to be cool, and to pretty much exclusively watch children’s films. My favourite movie of the last decade? Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. Yeah, that’s right. Not even ashamed.
9. It seems to obsess so many of us…
See all of the above.
10. …but we need to learn to talk about it
Here’s the thing: we have a rich and highly-developed language for talking about the good bits of motherhood, but not the rough bits. And we routinely sideline and ignore mothers who don’t look like the smiling white women on the cover of baby manuals. It’s time to let those voices in. It will help all of us.