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This is not a complaint or a cry for help. It is instead a celebration. When I collapsed out of exhaustion after finishing a presentation for work, I lay in bed in the dark thinking what a gruelling season this Covid-19 lockdown is for career mothers.
I'm in a position of privilege to write ny thoughts, to be able to lie in bed for 3 straight hours, to have a room, to have iftar, to have a paying job, a supportive partner, a home & the source of my happiness, my children. I wrote this in full awareness of other circumstances.
From the start of lockdown, the working mother has played all the roles in full blast - the full time housewife, the career woman as she works from home, the tutor to her children & the other facet of herself that keeps her spirit alive (her intellectual passion)
The moment she opens her eyes, she handles the housekeeping tasks - laundry, cleaning, cooking, tidying up. Then, her office tasks - lessons, superiors' requests, plans, special projects - in the same space she has to do house chores.
With the children at home, she has to make sure her children attend all the online classes & finishes their assignments, every day. Teachers even text parents schedules & reminders. All these, right in her face all at once.
All these leave the career mom feeling like a dying rat dragged around. So she has her escape, something that she considers as self-care, just to make her feel she is someone of agency, imagination, spirit. She tends her garden, does yoga, tries new recipes, reads & reviews.
She makes crafts, writes fiction, sews, watches TV with passion all in the late hours to maintain her mental well-being.
What about the men? They are there. But the most loving of men do not care about dust-bunnies on the ceiling fan blades. No man cares about the toilet not having ajax fabuloso's lavender smell. Men take out the chicken from the freezer 1 minute before they want to fry it.
No married man sets the alarm to wake up to prepare sahur ever. I can imagine a household of 2 brilliant, modern, educated, earning woman & man and I still know who prepares sahur most days. No father cares about his children's homework like a mother does.
Men are good for the big, adventurous tasks - supply run, repairs, neighbourhood networking & when he's done with it, it is like he has saved the world, sits in his chair & is proud of what he has accomplished. A mother's work is a cycle of never ending tasks after tasks.
And I know working moms who are doing all these with absent husbands (of many circumstances). If you are a working father whose experience is unique/ different, please share your story.
Why is it different lockdown vs pre covid? 1. We can buy food easily (no cooking) 2. Home & work place exclusivity (we don't see the dust-bunnies so often) 3. Home is refuge from work stress work is refuge from home stress. 4. Kids are taught by someone else for at least 7 hours.
This is a rant of a sick & tired person (literally). I would never trade this working mom-wife-writer-on-the-side experience for anything else (now). But I'm close to the verge of saying 'if you don't obsessively love children & take pleasure in taking care of them, stay single".
I just wished that somehow, along the line of history, the division of labour between men & women has been equal, and civilization had responded quicker, fairer to the development of women also being breadwinners in recent times.
After the exhaustion & self-depreciating thoughts of not being good enough, stop. You're doing the impossible. You take care of your home, you earn a living by honest work, you educate your children & you are writing your magnum opus/ starting a YT channel. You go, gals!
