Being A Working Mum Is F**cking Hard

Anon.

This is such a relatable topic to so many mums out there or primary carers but I also think just to anyone really.

I agree.

The themes are there and I think the biggest thing about this is like us millennial women have a lot to answer to.

that girl boss hustle culture work is everything stay until the sun goes down be that like that is the pop culture we grew up absorbing it's for most of us the start of our experience in the workplace was just like work is everything yeah you give it everything.

And then obviously when you have a family, something's got to give it, it's going to be work.

Exactly.

And I think there's that element to it.

And then the other thing at play is that largely we live in a society that wants us to work like we don't have kids and parent like we don't work.

And the reality for most Australians is that one salary cannot cover or support a whole family.

No, no way.

That... mother is having that time off to have that child whether that be a few months or six months or a year or in Anand's case 18 months which is incredible the reality is that we have to go back to work and I think that often at times we might not be ready to go back, which is really difficult.

And then we're going back to a job where we hold ourself to this ridiculously high expectation of output.

Or the same standard that you held

yourself to when work was

the centre of your world.

Yeah, exactly.

When I was researching this topic, I didn't need to do a lot of research because I lived it.

I have, in fact, done it twice.

But I came across this beautiful ABC article titled I Knew Returning to Work After Mat Leave Would Be a Huge Change.

It still shocked me.

Writer Bhakti Puvanentharan describes returning to work as a constant sensation of being compressed by all the expectations and newness.

And when I read that, I thought that's not unlike motherhood in and of itself.

The only difference is with motherhood is that motherhood You are comparing yourself, of course, to other mums, but you're kind of struggling in private and no one really sees you or kind of judges you.

But that aspect of comparison and the feeling of, like, not being able to do as much as your peers can be really demoralising.