When I first left work to become a full-time parent, I recall my irritation at being labelled a ‘homemaker’ and not ‘full time mother’. I wanted acknowledgement that I hadn’t left a career to simply play house. I wasn’t choosing to shine brasses, mop floors and dance around with my feather duster, I was mothering.
I still believe it is the most worthwhile of careers but I hadn’t quite appreciated how inextricably bound both roles were. While most of us will readily admit we know how to parent well, I wonder how many of us who are juggling busy lives are actually making that goal a reality.
There are boring, repetitious and largely thankless tasks that must be done in order to make a home function. I can’t feed my children, educate them, ensure they are dressed warmly or take care of them when they are ill if I don’t shop for food, organise their laundry, ensure they take their vitamins at breakfast and have batteries for the thermometer.
As my children grow they become more independent but it seems that they still need just as much of my time and attention as when they were infants. Alongside the basics of care, minding their emotional well-being, listening to their anxieties and worries and supporting them in their own decisions and activities is exhausting but, more importantly, it requires providing the space for these interactions to occur.
For working parents, creating that kind of space can be next to impossible. Parents tell me they could not manage without their au-pair, granny who helps out or their flexible childminder. Getting to see the school play, caring for a sick child, mid-term breaks or late hours place huge stress on working families and that’s without managing disagreements with a childminder over discipline, diet or television privileges.
A friend who works with children who have developmental and behavioural difficulties says that family life is changing and not for the better. More and more children arriving in her clinic are presenting with issues arising from the realities of living in exceptionally busy family environments where the basics of care are lacking.
For some, a hot meal every evening is no longer a reality, let alone a meal where the entire family is present. Children admit to be increasingly unmonitored for large portions of their day, a fact made all the more worrying when they admit to taking their electronic devices to bed to play games and browse the internet throughout the night.
This isn’t a symptom of poverty or neglect, but has everything to do with time poor parents and where they place their priorities. I know parents can only do so much, but if we aren’t even feeding our kids or ensuring that they get adequate sleep then we have lost our way.
It’s not uncommon for children from all socio-economic backgrounds to arrive at school with no breakfast, where no one has helped with or checked their homework or even asked them how their day went. I know some families manage wonderfully but for every one that does, there are a dozen more barely coping.
Parents are losers too; there is little joy in scheduling the life out of life, or barely seeing your child from day to day. When our society measures productivity and success primarily in monetary terms when we are convinced of the inevitability of a chaotic family life, staying home with our children will always be seen as an unaffordable luxury or worse yet, an indulgence.
Call it whatever you like, homemaking is a dying art and neither we nor or children are the better for its loss.
