Aren’t ALL Moms Working Moms?

You are working and you’re a mom.  Pretty much one and the same, right?!  Trying to balance the two can be exhausting, and you may be asking yourself how am I going to get through the next 18 years?  Being a working mom can most definitely have its challenges.  It’s basically two jobs in one.

Let’s take a look at ALL that comes with this title.

Food

We are expected to feed our families.  Feed our spawn and our spouses.  But wait.  First we have to drag ourselves to the grocery store and buy everything.  But wait.  Before we do that.  We have to meal plan and make a list.  Who has time for that?!

And then there are the actual meals.  Things here can get interesting.

Someone always gives us feedback. Husband loves the meal, son hates it. Son loves the meal, husband hates it.

Oh, and speaking of my son, the whole phrase Love-Hate comes a child’s food taste. One week he can love popcorn chicken so much he wants it for dinner every night. Once you’ve found a winner, you stick with it. So on the next grocery trip, you load up on the popcorn chicken.

Now here is a fact you can take to the bank- once you make that large purchase of the food your child loves so much, the very next meal you make will be the one where he informs you he hates that food.

All previous memory of his enjoyment of that very same entree will disappear from his mind quicker than you can say #$@%! as you head back to the kitchen to cook him something else.

Macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, chicken nuggets. They’ve all had their rotation in the Love and Hate columns.

Clothes

You can’t exactly send your children to school in their jammies, even though I’d rather get disapproving stares from other parents than spend one more morning telling my son to go get dressed. So I suppose we have to take care of clothing our family too.

Shopping for clothes for kids is fun.  They grow like three inches a night, so you can’t just go with whatever size you got last time. But then you have my son who refuses to try clothes on at the store, so it becomes sort of a guessing game anyways.

And you know whatever you buy them will be outgrown or worn out by the end of the next week. Recently, I bought my son a pair of new shorts. Later that day, wearing said shorts, he decides to climb over the fence instead of going through the open gate just two feet away. Needless to say, that decision resulted in getting hooked on a chain link and a complete shredding of the brand new shorts.  If you’ve got boys, you know what I’m talking about.

You’d think the job stops there, but I also handle wardrobe for husband. Left up to his own devices, his closet might get updated once every couple decades. If I’m going to spend time with him out in public, it can’t look like he just stepped out of the 90’s.  So I take care of buying clothes for him too.

Laundry

It is expected that everyone will wear clean clothes. Clothes that don’t smell.  Clothes that aren’t wrinkled or dirty.  And clothes that aren’t stained.   So yes, we have to do laundry too.

When I was young and single, it seems like I could get away with going a week or two between laundry day.  Now, sometimes I swear the washing machine never shuts down. It’s like I’m running a laundromat here I’m running loads so often. And I’ve seen you Moms with three or four kids, your houses have at least a pile of unfolded clothes in each room.  The laundry never stops.

Uber Driver

Let’s face it, our little rug rats aren’t getting anywhere unless we drive them there.  We drive them to school, to practice, to lessons, meetings, and all other activities we’ve got them in. It’s a lot of windshield time.

I’ve got a friend, with just two kids, who’s weekends are like an episode of SportsCenter. She’s taking them to this game, and then to that one.  I think one kid plays two sports the same day.  And that’s on top of the other activities she’s got them in.  She’s just a Mom doing Mom things.

Unpaid Sick Days

While we’re still on the subject of the Work of being a Mom, let’s cover one more perk of the job. You’re not allowed to be sick.  Let me correct that.  We can be sick, but don’t expect you’ll get any time off.

Our little ones still come to us.  They don’t leave us alone.  Need a nap?  Nope, that’s not allowed.

They’re hungry.  They can’t reach things.  They can’t make things.  They can’t find things.  It doesn’t matter how many blankets your piled under, or that you have the look of death on your face, they need our help.

You can get sick, just don’t expect to have a break from your Mom job.

Being a Mom IS Work

Many of us here at St. Louis Moms have jobs that we go to, in addition to having families to take care of. But you don’t have to have a job to be a Working Mom. When you have kids, especially young kids, just doing all the things that have to be done to take care of them is a job in itself. If you’re a Mom, you are a Working Mom, and don’t let anyone try to tell you different.

What do you think?  Do you agree, or am I just whining? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below.

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