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agirl -> RE: Who works more: Men or Women? (4/21/2007 3:36:13 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: juliaoceania
quote:
That is how I feel, also. There's tons of fantastic things about raising children but nothing can drain me the way it can, too. When I worked outside of home, it didn't *feel* like work, it didn't *take* the same things from me. It took all the easily replenishable stuff and if it wasn't to my liking, I could change it. The choice was there
You know, it was not the parenting work part of it that was exhausting for me on many levels, it was doing it alone. I just did not have someone to come home to me to share it all with. I never took the easy way out. I worked my schedule around my mom's so she could watch him. It was the responsibility that was completely and totally upon my shoulders as a single mom that I cannot communicate properly I suppose. I think that for someone that has a submissive sort of personality, that sense of complete and total responsibility was overwhelming. Never an "off" moment for many years... even if I got an evening out I spent it worried about my UM. I did not get child support, my ex lived in another state and never had my UM on the weekend... so my experience of parenting was full of seriousness and responsibility of wanting so much not to let him down and to do it right. I literally was mother and father to him. I made sure I walked him to the bus stop, and home from school. I made sure I was at every parent teacher conference. I volunteered in his class until he was in third grade, and I was the field trip mom.
I am downsizing my life lately getting ready for a move, and I was going through all the school work I had saved from when he was wee (he is now 6 foot 4). All those memories came flooding back. I would not change the way I did things given the tools I had, but for one thing, I wish I had not let the weight of the responsibility take some of my youthful energy and spunk away, because being the one where the buck stops is not all fun and games... it is work, work that is well worth doing.
I DO find parenting hard work. I know you have been/are a single mother and I was speaking from that position too, although even when my husband was alive, four sprogs were jolly hard work.
Quite frankly, being totally responsible for four sprogs, alone, even WITHOUT a submissive personality, still is overwhelming at times. It's never been the sprogs themselves that have drained me, it's knowing that there's no-one else but me that has to do it, along with keeping the home running and all that having a family contains.
I don't really think about whether it's worth doing or not.
agirl
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