Stay-At-Home Feminist

I resigned from a job I once loved. A job that became a career and which I am glad to have done. A career that became my identity whilst I was waiting to become mum. I fought with myself for months over the decision to resign. I agonised over every pro and every con and when I was truly honest with myself I realised that I just don’t care about the same things in the ways that I did, before my maternity leave. I don’t want to perform as would have been expected of me and I wouldn’t give it my all like I once did. That is not to say that my brain is not bursting out of my ears, desperate to hear something other than the gorgeous babble of my son over the washing machine turning for the forty-nine thousand, seven hundred and eighty billionth time. I’m looking forward to caring about something other than motherhood again. But until then, I simply could not return to a job that had so much power that it once broke me and then ceremoniously built me back up.

Whilst I was chasing promotions and lofty titles, I was judging the mums who worked AND the ones who didn’t. It was probably jealousy, but I thought it wasn’t fair to procreate and then ask for flexible working. I thought less hours meant working less hard and I overlooked the hours I wasted in a working week. Oh, to have those hours back now. I thought the juggle struggle was people who had it all merely complaining. More money than time to spend on their kids. Now, having had the initiation into motherhood and the coffee mornings and play dates that come with it I am flabbergasted at the number of women who are desperate to return to work but who are being forced out of the job market because employers would rather someone turn up for 40 hours a week just to get a wage, than have someone who is desperate to give them 20 hours a week. And the giving is an important element of this. Often these women are not desperate for the money but desperate for the break. To do a really fucking good job at something for 20 hours and then to do something else with the rest of their week. In fact, when I look across my various mum groups there are a number of women who would love to give 10, 20, 30 hours a week. Between them you absolutely have your arbitrary but seemingly magical number of 40 hours a few times over. And then I look to my single lady WhatsApp chats. The movers and shakers regularly work 50, 60 or more hours a week. I remember it well. And all the while I judged those flexible working requests and never considered that there I was, working a part time role over and above my full-time job and not getting paid for it.

Regardless though, I got myself really excited about returning to work and sending my son to nursery where he would learn loads of stuff that I simply don’t have the patience to teach him. I felt really privileged that I would be able to give him that because although I’ve done the messy play and we’ve made a fort out of cushions and we can both clap our hands now, the work that is done by the professionals in the childcare sector is excellent. Embarrassingly though, it is undervalued and underpaid. In my old world I’d sit in front of a head of department with an agenda, some biscuits and a data set to devour for a couple of hours before replying to emails on the way home. It was easy money compared to a day looking after the most beautiful and unreasonable person on the planet. Never mind a room full of them. So now, if I judge my friends who are returning to work after maternity leave, I judge them with admiration because I am in awe of what they are giving their children. I applaud them for showing the next generation that they will not be stopped by outdated views on how mothers can operate in the workplace. They have retained something that can be lost through child-birth and child-rearing. Something I may have lost through my resignation. I can’t bear the thought of admitting that I’m now, “just a stay at home mum”. I didn’t realise I was judging them before and I’m so sorry now that I have.

Simply because of the timing of it all, I didn’t have “just” a maternity leave. The pandemic meant I had a break from everything I once valued in my old life. Pre-pandemic I was on a trajectory that would trap me in a vicious cycle of constantly wanting more. I had learned to believe that success was constant growth and acceleration and more, more, more. For the sake of any future employers who may stumble across this I’m all for big cars and fancy dinner parties and wearing diamonds. Let’s all make a shit-tonne of money bitches. But right now, the truth is sleep is free and that’s the only thing I want more of. I bought the sleep course, the sleep book, the black-out blinds and yet a 6am wake up is a money-can’t-buy gift. I don’t overlook the other gift that I am so truly massively hugely incredibly overwhelmingly fortunate to have been handed. The gift of time with my son. It is one of the greatest gifts my husband has ever given me and I know not all mothers facing the end of their maternity leave have the luxury of making the choice I have.

I’m deluded and privileged enough to still believe that my time matters. I want to spend it on something I love. That’s why I’m so honoured that you’re reading these words. I believe your time is your most valuable asset too and that was why I didn’t understand the stay at home mums. I didn’t understand their angst when they said that the work never ends, and I didn’t understand why they did it if they didn’t love every minute of it. Why take a low paid, part-time job that you are over-qualified for and bored by just to get out of the house? There is rarely a time limit on a 9-5 job. You could do it all day every day and the work will never be done because there is always more growth to be had. That is what corporate and capitalism rests on. So, if the work is always going to be there (withholding pandemic and redundancy etc) I cannot fathom why it can only be done on a weekly basis over 40 hours by one person as many of my mothering friends have been told. Why can’t it be done over 40 hours by two people? Or 50 hours from two people or any other combination that truly showcases equality in the workplace. And not equality because people have kids. Equality because people have lives.

When I told a friend I had resigned she said it was brave. I hadn’t thought of it as brave because I was so convinced I’d failed at being the working mother I always thought I would be. I’m basically just a massive cliché and over the course of my working life I’ll probably earn less money now than if I didn’t have a baby. That feels unfair because having a baby doesn’t make me less capable but I’ll start something new and building it all up will cost me. My husband’s career doesn’t have the same impact by having a baby. I was raised by a single mum (between boyfriends and husbands) and she impressed upon me how important it is for women to fight for equality. To her that meant earning her own money, raising her kids and doing a lot of really dodgy DIY. But the “anything you can do I can do better” school of feminism just doesn’t work in my house. I don’t want my son to see equality as a straight line, tit for tally whacker. To me, equality is accepting vulnerability as a human trait that will come and go over our lives. Sometimes I’ll be vulnerable, sometimes his daddy will be. But as a unit we will work together to make sure that we all have a fair go at growing and being our most successful selves. I will never stop growing. My CV will look weaker, some skills might go rusty and my bank balance will weep. But I’m going to figure out how to be a stay-at-home-feminist who makes fucking good cocktails and does excellent DIY.