🙅🏾‍♀️ Moms Need Days Off, and No, Mother's Day Doesn't Count

👉🏼 We Need to Acknowledge Motherhood as a Full Time Job

photograph taken by แม่ Jitsawat and edited by Jitsie via Canva (florals are generated images)

I sat at my dining table, chatting with two good friends over boba. I sipped my jasmine milk tea as I listened to the commentary.

“When I was teaching, I went back to work three weeks after having my second,” my friend shared. Her curly locks were pulled back into an elegant low bun, and she was nestled in a sweater as gray and soft as the clouds covering the sky.

“Three weeks?!”

“Yup. I had the baby attached to my front while I taught. Do you know who didn’t have to do that?”

“You’re husband,” the third of us answered, their black strands framing either side of their face.

“I’m so tired of motherhood not being recognized as a full-time job,” I complained. I considered how my friend was basically confessing that she was working two full-time jobs at the exact same time, but only getting compensated for one.

“I have a friend who is a nanny,” I continued. “And has been for several years. She was visiting me once and said, ‘I do the same thing you do every day, but I get paid for it.’”

I paused while the other two agreed, recalling the validation I felt the moment my nanny friend said that to me, and how it had stuck with me ever since.

“It makes no sense to me,” I went on. “I cook and clean and take care of the kids, but because it’s my house and they’re my kids, it’s not considered work.”

“Yup!”

“But if I were to go to your house,” I pointed to my sweatered friend. “And take care of your chores and your kids, that’s a job.”

“Yup.”

“I hate it.”

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The above story is true, including the point my nanny friend made that has stuck with me for years. I will never shake it. I never want to. I want someone to make it make sense, though I know that will never happen because the only way to make it make sense is to admit that the current way motherhood¹ is conducted is an injustice to women.

The history of how I became a mother is a long and storied one, one that I perhaps will share another day. But as you can tell, I have thoughts. I have feels. They have been arising within me over the past seven-ish years; they may ruffle feathers, may rub people the wrong way.

They started by first appearing in my body, then manifested as anxiety. I thought I was alone.

Isn’t that what society shaped us to be as mothers? Isolated and disconnected? There is no more familial help because our country follows the model of the nuclear family. I have seven neighbors in immediate proximity to my home, and I don’t know any of them. There is no sense of community.

I have twelve years of motherhood experience, the latter half of which I began to awake from the fever dream of American womanhood. I thought I was alone, thinking it was all in my head, until I discovered essays by other moms and women online, most recently publications like Men Yell at Me, The Motherlode, and Liberating Motherhood, among others. I read their posts and want to jump up and down and scream YES! after completing each one because I feel s e e n .

I found the podcast The Double Shift and listened to all the women busting their asses to be kick-ass moms, earn incomes, and contribute to their households. Each one working one, two, or sometimes three different jobs to make ends meet or to pursue a passion.

After the recent conversation around my dining table, I realized that while all of these publications inspire me and hit the nail on the feminist head, I still want to work on the verbiage and dialogue around women who raise children full-time.

We need to recognize motherhood as a full-time job and realize the injustice of uncompensated invisible labor. Would you work 84+ hours a week, frequently getting awoken in the middle of the night, be on call 24/7, with no team to provide daily support, and accept no pay?

Here are my thoughts, feels, and how I want to proceed past those thoughts and feels.

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We are NOT Superheroes

I have a journal I acquired in high school. It has a very 90s-esque comic-like illustration of a woman (white and blonde, of course) juggling a myriad of items: children, pets, chores, while standing atop an alarm clock. In the center of all of this is the term “Wonder Woman.”

I remember picking this journal out. I was barely 18, and although I didn’t find the art style particularly thrilling, the image resonated with me. I was already this woman of wonder, already juggling so much before I even graduated high school. I was hustling like Americans are supposed to hustle; I was sure to go far in life!

This woman was who I aspired to be, and I was already on track to become her.

the journal, altered in Canva. floral background generated by Canva

A term I used to admire and consider a great badge of honor for women to collect is “Supermom.” I’m sure whoever has used the term, myself included, had every intention of recognizing the hard work moms put in, hours upon hours each day, cumulatively each year upon years, multitask upon multitask. This is likely how many people deem this term: “Mom, you do so much. You’re so amazing. I’m so grateful.”

But what I have come to despise about this term is the implication that moms have some superability that allows us to do it all, do it well, and do it on our own, therefore providing a pass for anyone to provide help.

We don’t have a superability. We are human. Yes, we do it all, we do it well, and we do it on our own because we have to. No one else is going to do it, nor with even half of the care we put into it. We aren’t defeating the villainous mounds of laundry and evil to-do lists. We are surviving.

Dr Agnieszka Klimowicz, Consultant Psychiatrist at The London Psychiatry Centre says about survival mode:

While our body’s clever stress response evolved to protect us from life-or-death threats… our busy modern lives today involve non life-threatening stressors that can still trigger our fight or flight response: such as deadlines, work emails, and even heavy traffic.² Being in fight or flight affects not just the mind but the body – it raises blood pressure and heart rate… and [in the] long-term, a dysregulated nervous system (being in survival mode) is unhealthy...

I have met, befriended, volunteered, and worked with many mothers over the past twelve years, and I would bet my next 50 cups of coffee that we were all (and probably still are) living in survival mode.

But no one will recognize it. We instead call it superheroism and ignore it.

Perhaps this is because a different term arose to identify the overwhelm women endure: Mommy Burnout. (I even read the book on it!)

What a cute name. Makes it seem less concerning, doesn’t it?

Clinical health psychologist Amy Sullivan, PsyD says of mommy burnout, also described as “depleted mother syndrome” by the medical community (though it is not recognized as a medical diagnosis):

Women experience higher levels of stress and anxiety than men in their day-to-day decision-making… Trying to do everything all the time leads to an imbalance that throws everything — including your emotions — out of whack. If it goes on for long enough, it leads to burnout.

The article by Cleveland Clinic continues to say:

The emotional toll is compounded by trying to balance success at work, often being the primary caretaker for any children in the household, managing other family-related tasks and staying on top of housework... Mom burnout is real.

So please, stop describing the mothers you know as superheroes, gawking at their amazing ability to to do it all while you eat the dinner they prepared, and just pick up your damn socks off the floor on your way to load the dishwasher.

And not just once. Make a mental note to do so every day. I promise that for this one mental note you create in your mind, the mother in your life has ten more.

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If we aren’t superheroes, then what are we?

Fucking goddesses.

I know. I went on a rant about how we don’t have similarities to superheroes, then upgraded us to goddesses. Sounds like I need to explain myself.

I’m not going to take long on this, but I will say that I am so baffled by how we live not only in a patriarchal society, but a patriarchal society that deems women the “less thans.”

We.

fucking.

create.

life.

Yes, yes, we need the male “seed” to get things going, but I’m sure with scientific advancements we can figure out how to do it on our own one day. You know, when we aren’t distracted by fighting for equal pay and for our invisible labor to be recognized as labor.

Or our reproductive rights.

How are we “less than” when our bodies’ ability to procreate is such a hot commodity that the government is fighting over control of it? If we weren’t so important, the people trying to control us would not be trying to control us.

Nothing pisses people off more than a woman thinking aloud, “I dont’ think I want to have kids.”

You don’t have to have kids to be a goddess. You can have the choice and still be divine.

You don’t have to be a woman to be a goddess. If your body can create life in your womb…

fucking.

goddess.

Goddesses can do whatever the hell they want. That’s why they try to control us; we frighten them. We have power, and they want us to forget that we have it, lest we use it.

Women are the bearers of life and should be revered, nurtured, and protected.

Instead, we are threatened³, suppressed⁴, and abused⁵.

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We are Intuitives

According to this article by Katie Quirk of Upskilled, how people think can be understood as a spectrum, one side leaning to more analytical traits, the other, intuitive. Both types veer towards certain skill sets, and Quirk lists intuitive skills as follows:

Intuitive personality types tend to be more empathetic… and are also typically good at:

• Making decisions and judgments based on the gut feel of a situation

• Being observant, spotting patterns, reading people and picking up on cues that subconsciously influence their decisions

• Making the right decision quickly with minimal information, especially if they’re high-performing

While every person has a uniquely different ratio of analytical and intuitive, mothers acquire a magical intuition after childbirth. This is backed by science.

“Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.”

―Arthur C. Clarke

According to research referenced by Mikko Pornel, mother of three, in the article “The Science Behind a Mother’s Intuition”, mothers’ hormones, such as oxytocin and cortisol, contribute to their intuitiveness. Pornel notes:

Research shows that moms might have a stronger cortisol reaction when their child is upset, helping us stay focused and alert to any potential dangers.⁴ It’s like our bodies are set up to keep us extra aware of our kids.

Our hormone levels aren’t the only thing priming our intuition; a mother’s brain activity contributes, too. Pornel continues:

…certain brain areas linked to empathy get more active in moms. A recent study found that the anterior insula, which helps process emotions and predict outcomes… helps them understand and anticipate their child’s needs.

… experts say mothers are more likely to notice changes in their child’s health or behavior compared to others.⁷ This heightened awareness, developed through daily interactions, primes us to act quickly when something doesn’t feel right.

It’s no wonder men thought us witches. It’s probably the one thing they had right about us⁶. We are magic embodied.

No matter how magical we are, all the energy we expend surviving and being real-life goddesses and intuitives drains us. And we need to rest.

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Beyond Thoughts and Feels

Mindset has been a big shining light of a word of late, hasn’t it? Let me contribute to this conversation.

Our collective mindset needs to change in terms of homemaking and child-rearing.

It is a full-time job.

It is a full-time job with consistent overtime.

It is a full-time job with incredibly blurred boundaries.

You cannot physically separate parts of your life that all occur in the same area. There is no way to separate them; the work part of your homemaking and motherhood is permanently merged with the leisure part of your homemaking and motherhood.

This does not change the fact that it is a full-time job.

So, when you have a preconceived notion about a stay-at-home mom and how easy she may have it because she doesn’t work outside of her home, remember: she has a full-time job. She just doesn’t get paid for it.

When you see a mom with a part-time job or side hustle, she also has an uncompensated full-time job.

When you see a mom with a full-time job, she has two full-time jobs, but only gets paid for one.

Also, remember that unless she is fortunate enough to have support, whether from a spouse, family member, friend, or outsourced help, she has no team to assist her, delegate to, or share the load. She is a one-woman company, CEO of her home, and her household is her business.

And because she is working full-time with mandatory overtime, she needs days off. It’s the law. And no, Mother’s Day does not count.

Kerala Taylor of Mom, Interrupted said it exquisitely:

… Mother’s Day represents a day of shallow lip service, during which our country pretends to care, for roughly 16 waking hours, about the contributions of mothers by pumping $34 billion into an economy that doesn’t value or serve us.⁷

the flowers my children got me early for mother’s day, background generated by Canva

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Beyond Mindset: Proceeding Past Thoughts and Feels

• Practice taking days off. Once a week is ideal. Once a month is better than nothing. Once a year: no.

  • For us mothers, we need to stack the habit: when planning out the family’s schedule, pen in (not pencil, give it permanence) a day off. Arrange childcare—childcare that includes feeding the kids. The goal is to take all things off our plates. If we need inspiration, we can consider what our spouse does (if we have one) on their day off. We need to put it in our calendars and protect it. We need to say no when someone tries to take that time. All of this is easier said than done, but we must practice to get to the point of normalizing it within our homes’ ecosystems.

• If you are not the mother, but want to support her, support her.

  • Let’s start with the basics: clean up after yourself. You’re a functioning adult; do not make her your maid.

  • Take initiative. Sink full of dishes? Wash them. Trash full? Take it out without being asked. Out of toilet paper? Go to the store. The home is a place for which all who live need to contribute to its overall state and well-being. She may take the lead at home, but that does not mean she needs to do every single thing herself.

• Help her protect her boundaries.

  • If she’s been working all day, whether it’s been at home or at a different location, and has retreated to her bedroom, stop the kids before they barge in on her and bombard her with questions and needs, and help them instead.

  • When she has scheduled a day off, help her truly have a day off. Help arrange the childcare. Back her up when someone insists on taking up her time when she has already said no.

  • Many mothers do not have the privilege of providing themselves with a day off. Bills, caretaking, or other life nabbing things can prevent many moms from having even a moment to themselves. If you notice this, how may you help?

To all my mommas out there, you are magic.

We’ve been dealt a difficult hand, then we were conditioned to believe we were given a gift⁸ when actually, we were handed work.

We can rise above, we can fight for balance, and one day we will spin this shit into gold.

Jitsie Freebie

This month’s freebie is one of my favorite clips of Reese Witherspoon plus a curated list of awesome books written by kick ass moms.

The Kick Ass Mom Book List

(with clickable links)

1. I will use the terms mom, mother, motherhood, women, and she/her/hers, but motherhood is nuanced and takes many forms. Please know I use these terms because of how I relate to motherhood, but I acknowledge that mothers and motherhood can be experienced and identified in many other ways.

2. school drop off, anyone?

3. Approximately 4.5 million women in the United States have been threatened by intimate partners with firearms (13).

4. US$105 trillion: The global wealth gap between men and women (nearly equal to the world’s gross domestic product).

5. From 1994 to 2010, approximately 4 in 5 victims of intimate partner violence were female.

6. And no one completely understands the female body.

7. Don’t get it twisted, treat your mother like a queen on Mother’s Day. Just know you can probably do better—think about what she wants. Or just ask her. She probably already let it slip out like this lovely woman:

jillian.marie3

A post shared by @jillian.marie3

8. Before anyone gets their panties in a tizzy, I am not saying our children aren’t gifts.