How can a life of parenting chores, home chores, work and the occasional night out to drown the feelings of drudgery in alcohol possibly lead to anything other than complete and utter spirit-breaking boredom, resentment and frustration? (…)
what human beings need, in order to be happy and excited about life, is precisely the opposite of [these] unrewarded, repetitive tasks, and brainless mush.
(…)
the moment you have children it becomes almost impossible to have a rewarding, challenging career, unless you employ someone else to look after your offspring for you.
Your day is bookended by the school runs, and I am yet to meet one high-flying career woman who works a six-hour day and can take as many days off to care for sick kids as she needs.
So thousands of intelligent, ambitious women who would just love to stretch their brains, and gain a sense of achievement and self-worth outside the home, end up taking woefully unexciting jobs in offices, shops or working from home – jobs they are often highly overqualified for – simply because they allow the flexible working hours needed to be a hands-on mother.
***
At age four, it became blatantly obvious to me (by watching my mother) that a woman could either have a job or a child or both.
I was surrounded by adults who opined openly and endlessly that they wished they’d never had children, because kids were a noisy, expensive time suck.
Based upon personal observation, it seemed people had children because they needed someone to go buy them cigarettes when they were too drunk to get off the couch themselves.
So naturally I picked “job.”
(It helps if, like me, you were surrounded by nuns who modeled a busy, childless life.)
Life isn’t as difficult as people make it out to be. You simply have to be prepared to make sometimes difficult decisions and act on them.
(My decision not to have children wasn’t “difficult,” actually, because among other reasons, I hated other children when I was a child and saw no reason to believe that their obnoxious behaviour wouldn’t manifest itself just because they’d sprung from my loins at some future date.)
Please don’t moan to me later if you weren’t as smart as I was. That’s just not my problem, and you’re boring me.
