Am I really going to tackle such a broad topic in a short blog post? No probably not. I also cannot speak for all the women. Just this one. Me. Slightly lost, yogi, blonde who is obsessed with healthy food. This privileged white girl from a good family with decent education from one of the world’s oldest universities on the old continent. So if this one can’t have it all, how does the rest stand a chance?
You know how it’s so ok to be lost when you are teenager? How it’s still tolerated when you are at university or you are testing the waters in your first job? But it’s misunderstood when you are a mother nearing thirty who should have everything figured out. Well I wish I took the time to be lost ten years earlier. I wasn’t though. If I was, it must have faded from my memory. I somehow always knew what the next step was.
Lately I am so angry with the world. And I say the world because I don’t know who else to be angry with. How nice it would be to find someone to blame or to find the reason, pinpoint it and then figure out what’s happening.
Foreign for here, foreign for home. Support from neither. With the little human who literally cannot be without me. It’s not so easy to be away from home. It’s not so easy without the benefits. It’s not that easy to find a job. And not just A job. The job that is your level of inteligence and part time. Because why make a human only to leave the human in the little human institution called the kinder-garden for every working day of the week? Here in the 21st century Australia – a developed country, in many ways a forward thinking country.
I have recently lost my job due to the worldwide crisis. I have been job hunting since along with hundreds of other people. Recently I had a job interview for a full time pretty high level job. I cried all the way back home in the car. The interview itself went really well, but I thought I actually couldn’t afford to take it. Job with an above average pay. With non-resident taxes and childcare fees, I would end up in a 40 hour a week of stress with never seeing the above mentioned human.
So tell me why is it that ALL part time jobs that are offered are for admin assistants? Do women automatically scale back their intelligence after having families? This is why feminism is still so important. Even today. Even in westernised countries.
It’s important because women should have the option to return to workforce in their line of work. It’s important because women should be able to be stay at home mums and be perfectly content with the decision. It’s important because even if you are currently not bringing the gold into the household, it still means that you are equal with your partner in every way.
Also! And this took me a really long time to understand – it’s absolutely ok to be completely lost in motherhood. No matter how wonderful and perfect is your child. To feel like you have lost the sense of yourself. I don’t know how to find it. Especially with no free time. But today I have been told it must be the cycle of life. That it’s not an uncommon feeling.
Now looking at the topic from a completely different perspective. Yuval Harari (the author of Sapiens, if you haven’t read it yet, please do) is of the opinion that in the rapidly changing environment, most jobs will become obsolete. Not just manual work, but even professions such as doctors. This obviously goes into so much more depth in the book, but in short, it’s because algorithms will know us better than we know ourselves. An app that knows your full medical history and all your daily activities will be able to diagnose you much faster. In theory the education that we receive now will not serve us in the near future and thus different professions, such as raising children, will again become important.
It might also be about changing the way I think. In my case right now, it would be to say: I am not employed right now, but it doesn’t mean that I am not working. It doesn’t mean that I am not contributing. It does not mean that I am a less of a person. And to be ok with it. Not for the people around me to be ok with it. Not to convince anyone else, but to convince myself and my ego that it’s ok. That it’s ok to take this time in my life to figure out what the hell it’s to be a mother. And just to be grateful for a partner that is supportive in every way. And that it’s also ok to want something else from life. To still want to create, write, to still want to be alone. To desperately crave a weekend away by yourself and with your diary and plenty of books. To be able to read a whole book in a day. To not cook all day. And most importantly to not feel fucking guilty about it.
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