Juggling being a full time working parent is not easy.
Olivia attended nursery full time since she was just 5 months old. Those first few days, weeks and even months were some of the hardest days of my life. Having to adjust to leaving your precious baby for 9 hours a day in the care of someone else takes some getting used to. But not once in the last three years have I used being a parent as an excuse to get out of work duties.
Now that she is in school the childcare arrangements have actually become hardier.
We have no family living close by. Adam has to travel for his work. There have also been days when I have had to travel for work. On these days it would take one of us a minimum of an hour to get to her. Do you know how much that fills me with worry and anxiety. What if she needed us and we couldn’t get to her?
There are so many comments made by non parents that are os belittling and damaging. Us parents have enough on our hands without having to defend our every move.
Being a parent is unpredicatble
As a parent it is impossible to try and guess what is going to happen at any given time. And that isn’t just related to our children but to the world around us to. No parent ever decided it would be fun getting stuck in a horrendous traffic jam while trying to drop our children off to nursery or school in the morning. Do you not think that we thought about the logistics whilst arranging returning to work?
It feels like us women just can’t win no matter what we do. If we don’t return to work we are lazy benefit scroungers, taking the easy route. If we return to work we are neglecting our children.
Parenting is hard enough as it is we should be supporting one another and building each other up. We shouldn’t have to defend ourselves. We are all just out here trying to do our very best for our children.
We women aren’t unprofessional for wanting to be there to deal with our children. After all you can never get this time back and they grow up so quickly. In this day in age you would think that more companies were supporting parents with flexible working.