Is Not Working Working?

There are two obvious side-effects of not having a ‘job’: no money and no one to blame for a bad day but yourself.

You never planned to be a SAHM.

You always assumed you'd be a WAHM.

You started off as a WAHM; with your first child it's not too difficult. Work when she naps. Do a bit more when the ManChild arrives home from work. Still got a few contacts who give you bits and bobs to tide you over.

Then the second child comes along. A mere 18 months after the first. So now you have a baby and a toddler on your hands.

The naps are impossible to synchronise.

As Stephanie Calman (Confessions of a Bad Mother) put it,
“Trying to get them to have their nap at the same time is like trying to do those impossible games with the little silver balls: as one goes in, the other rolls out.”

There's no down time. You can't be a WAHM, feed a newborn, look after a toddler, the house and the ManChild. Something's gotta give.

So you find yourself now a SAHM. It's not something you feel comfortable with. It has connotations of Earth Mother types, or Domestic Goddesses or, worse, 'homemakers'. These are the kind of people who think there is something amiss if you don't grow your own organic alfalfa sprouts and hand-sew all your children's garments, fashioned entirely from ethically sourced banana skins. These mothers don't work because they think that having a working mother is Bad For the Children. You hope to betsy no one mistakes you for one of these lentil suckers. You're no martyr. You're a SAHM because you let things slide, couldn't fit it all in, didn't somehow get round to sorting out childcare. It was an accident.

And now your home is your workplace. It isn't somewhere to go to relax, unwind and switch off after a hard day at work. There is always something needing to be done. Meals to cook, beds to make, washing to put away. So if home is no longer your sanctuary, where can you go to relax?

All those mothers who have jobs they go to outside the home, feeling guilty that they're not with their children, take heart. Even when you're at home with them all the time, you hardly see them. That's because you're usually tidying, cleaning, cooking or otherwise engaged in drudgery.

They sit transfixed, eyes saucer-like, watching the TV while you rush around trying to 'get on top of things'. Why you kid yourself you ever will is as much a mystery to them as it is to you.