From celebrity moms to parenting magazines to moms on the playground, whenever most women talk about parenting, they say the same thing: “Parenting is the hardest, but most rewarding, job in the world, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything!”
There are few of us who would dispute the overall premise of that, but I wonder if every one of us who says it really means it?
Meaning, do we always think that parenting is rewarding all the time, even though it’s something we say all the time? Or, is it something we have to say? Why is it that we feel so compelled to say how rewarding parenting is whenever we talk about the difficulty? Are we not allowed to complain? Or is it that we always have to be “happy moms?”
I am the mom of 3-year-old triplets, and my life with them has been exhilarating, but it has also been incredibly exhausting.
During my days with them, my kids consume all of my energy and at night, they still want more! I struggle daily to keep up with the demands of parenting, on some days more successfully than others.
I also struggle to maintain other aspects of my life outside of parenting. I struggle to keep lunch dates with friends (assuming I can remember I had a lunch date), and I struggle to keep up with the demands of my professional life.
So parenting is hard, and it’s in those moments when it doesn’t feel very rewarding. Instead it feels like I’ve been duped. That said, if I had a conversation with a fellow mom I would say, “it’s the most rewarding job in the world,” even if I didn’t think so at the time — and I know that I’m not alone in that.
At some point, every one of us feels drained, confused, and exhausted by our roles as mothers. There are moments in all of our lives when we are not “happy moms,” and in fact, we may be downright miserable (at least momentarily), and yet, it feels like we are not allowed to say it. It feels like whenever we talk about our lives as mothers everything has to seem perfect.
I wonder if fewer moms would feel less guilty or isolated if they knew that they weren’t alone, and that having feelings of dissatisfaction is completely normal. It is also possible that by reflecting on the difficulty of parenting without talking about the joys of it in the same sentence, it would cause more of us to feel inspired by the importance of our job. Would we all feel a greater sense of purpose, satisfaction, and accomplishment by simply talking about parenting in a different way, by just saying that “parenting is the hardest job in the world”?
Notoya Green is a parenting expert and former family law attorney. You can read her blog at www.tripletsintribeca.com. You can also follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tripletsintribeca and on Twitter @NotoyaG.
