I'm the at-home parent right now. I haven't always been (we haven't always had an at-home parent...) but it's true today, it's true now. If you've read my blog before perhaps you've sensed some of the disorientation and conflicted feelings that come with the territory? Perhaps you're in a similar boat? (or wish to be.)
It's odd, because I'm so at-peace with this decision (being at home) but yet I feel the pressure, the need to contribute economically. Some of it is external, but I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that some of it is internal.
The logic goes something like this: After all, I am the primary money drain. As the at-home parent, I spend most of the money. Groceries, clothes and shoes for me and the kids, activities fees, eating out, school uniforms, vet bills.
Well, and I have rather expensive taste in technology. Eep.
Yet I see the dilemmas faced by my working friends every single day. The string of babysitters or day-care centers, some more competent than others, the panic related to an unexpected case of strep, the desire to avoid having everyone in the office know you're working from home yet again, the scared feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're late to pick up the kids...again, the pained conversations with spouse whose job is even less flexible than yours, or the intricate dance that divorced friends execute between custody, job, and childcare.
I don't pine for any of that. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be at home, even if it's a kind of begrudging choice based on scheduling impossibilities and a lack of opportunities and quite a lot of reluctance on my part.
Yet I feel like I should work, and I would like the validation on my contribution to the human race that a "regular" job would provide. Because as much as answering the eleventy billion questions my kids pose daily and driving from here to beyond and back every day for their activities is validating, it's not a particularly tangible validation.
Don't get me wrong. It's important to be here, to be witness to this childhood period for them. To be available to listen in, and contribute to conversations about the stories we're reading, listen to them talk about what interests them, being here to answer their questions. It's validating to feed them, to know that I'm helping them grow, to know that I'm teaching them important life skills by teaching them how to cook, giving them increased responsibilities at home, taking them to the bank to open savings accounts (another post for that topic!)
Even as the at-home parent, though, it's hard to let go of the concept of measurable job performance (which the consultant in me is laughing at, because of course this is something that most of my clients through the years have been miserable at defining, horrible at recognizing, and almost never rewarding based on actual measurable job performance metrics!) Productivity measures like to-do list items crossed off, accomplishments achieved, goals reached, tasks completed. It's hard to get full credit for your day when the main accomplishment was coming out alive with two small people in your charge.
But even now as I'm trying to live in the moment (something I've asked of myself this summer, because I have to have goals...) I still have my goals for the day, and a constant stream of disappointment as it continues to take me three times as long as even my most conservative gannt chart estimates to accomplish the simplest of tasks.
It would help if I had a teleporter, definitely.
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