Last week I poked fun at the idea that us moms ignore our responsibilities to spend the entire day online. Obviously this is not the case for most of us, but the accusation that many of us are spending too much time online is a real one. Many of us wonder what we can do to find the balance between all the things vying for our immediate attention.
My question is this, why do we feel like we need to do it all?
The truth is women have been ignoring their children for centuries. You didn’t see Ma leaving the log cabin to join Laura and Mary for a game of kickball. There was butter to be churned dammit. Carol Brady’s kids ran amuck and certainly you didn’t see the likes of Roseanne, Peg Bundy, Claire Huxtable, Marge Simpson, or even June Cleaver building blocks with their kids.
The wife and mom of the 2000’s is faced with some interesting problems. Not only do we feel some pressure to make money, keep a perfect house, raise perfect kids, be perfect wives, pay the bills, and squeeze in that “me time” we hear so much about…but we’re also faced with a barrage of studies and statistics that leave us feeling guilty about the kind of parenting we ARE doing.
Thanks to the media and a world filled with perverts we’re now hyper aware of any and every child abducted from their homes. We can no longer send our kids to wander the neighborhood with friends sans parents. I won’t even allow my child to retrieve mail from our mailbox unassisted.
So the children stay home.
But BEWARE MOTHERS! Kids who watch too much TV will develop ADD, video games cause cancer, high frutcose corn syrup is the devil, and bath time is death waiting to happen!! Many of us have turned into “helicopter” parents who simply cannot relax and let our kids explore lest they get hurt and we be judged for not paying attention to their every God forsaken move.
For years mothers have been shooing kids, “Go play, go outside, go to your room, go clean up, go wash up, go ask your Dad…go go go”. Whether it be making money, cleaning house, cooking meals, paying bills, checking email, or churning butter dammit we’re not always interested in building blocks. And while the stay at home moms of yesterday were accused of eating Bon Bons and watching Soap Operas all day, the stay at home moms of today are accused of spending too much time online.
Same accusation, new hobby. Nothing has changed.
When we do lose ourselves in our commitment to serve our kids and husband, eyebrows are raised. Where is your me time? What do you do to make yourself happy? You’re losing sight of who you are! And yet, when we insist on the Me Time we’re seen as selfish or lazy. I’ve never heard what the right answer is to finding the balance and raising kids correctly, but there sure seem to be a lot of wrong ones.
My house is not immaculate. I don’t cook dinner every night. Sometimes I forget to pay a bill on time. I often set kids up with coloring books and slip over to the computer to check my email. I tell them to “go play”…a lot. I take care of whatever chore is screaming in my head the loudest.
But there’s one thing you can be sure of…if you were to walk into our home you would hear a whole lot of laughter. You might trip on a few shoes…but you would hear laughter.
Forget balance, that’s how I know I’m doing a good job.