Parenting is Not a Job

There is a viral video making the rounds this week, in which a company put out a fake job listing and then interviewed some poor suckers who, you know, actually need work, and then told them they would have to work 24-7 with no breaks, no pay, no vacations, etc.  And then, at the end, Ha Ha!  Surprise!  There is no job!  We were talking about MOMS!  Get it?  And then everyone in the video cries and says how much they love their mothers and how much they want to buy greeting cards from American Greetings, because that is the perfect thanks for the life of slavery described in the ad.

Rarely have I been so annoyed at something people are finding so “heartwarming.”  The first thing I thought was, what about fathers?  I also do all of those things, get no pay for it, and receive ethereal rewards.  I don’t get it.  I know that not all dads are stay at home dads, but working dads are also often “on-call” for their children, even when they are at the office, and especially when they are home.  And if working dads don’t fit the bill, then does that discount working moms?  Is this ad implying that only stay at home moms cater to their children and achieve maximum parenting satisfaction?  And if so, that video sucks even harder than I thought it did.  And if not, if working moms and stay at home moms are equally acceptable, then there really is no excuse for leaving out dads.

But Tenor Dad!  It is a mother’s day ad!  Can’t we celebrate mothers without having you take it as a diss on dads?  Stop being so sensitive!  Yes, I see your point.  And I have no problem celebrating moms for what they do, but this reminds me of an incident many years back with one of my sister’s beaus.  This guy was not the brightest bulb on the tree, and we were playing a game of Taboo, which if you’re not familiar is a game in which you have to get people to guess a word without saying a list of the most obviously helpful words.  This guy picked up his card and said to us, “It’s black.”  That was all he said.  We guessed as hard as we could.  Tar!  Licorice!  The night sky!  All wrong.  And he kept yelling, “It’s black!  It’s black!”  Turns out, it was a briefcase.  We explained that briefcases could also be…..brown!  And he said, “but I was thinking of a black briefcase!”  So there you go.  You cannot give a description that applies to multiple things and then expect us to go along with your specific answer.  You can’t say “Who gives their time and energy to their children all the time?” and then say “Moms!”  Although I would be fine with you saying “What do Moms do?” and then saying all of those things (even though Dads do those things too).

But what really makes me crazy is this idea that being a parent is your job.  This idea that you have to give up all sense of yourself and any chance of a life to be a parent is so dangerous.  I get that there are sacrifices that we all have to make for our kids.  Absolutely we do.  And I also see people out there that seem to be out drinking every night and traveling for work while their poor spouse is home with the kids.  I myself have felt the guilt of being gone too long while my kids needed me.  But either extreme is unhealthy.  There needs to be a balance.

Being a parent is awesome, and it is a lot of work, but it is not a job.  If anything, it is a really intense hobby.  And it doesn’t last forever.  You don’t get paid for it, you can’t put it on a resume, and eventually those kids are going to move out and, yes, you will still love them and want to take care of them, but they are going to have their own lives.  If you define yourself only by your children, at the expense of everything else about yourself, what are you going to do when they turn 18?  Fall apart?  Be depressed and lonely?  Start adopting more babies?  Bother your adult children until they start rolling their eyes at you and making up excuses as to why they can’t come home for Christmas?  Or are you going to go to work and tell everyone how bittersweet it is that your kids have grown up?  Are you going to go to your rehearsal, or your class, or your support group, and continue on with the part of your life that doesn’t revolve around your children?  Because people, please, there needs to be some part of your life that doesn’t revolve around your children.  It will be better for you, and it will be better for your kids.  And it will be better for your friends, because, as we all know, there is nothing more annoying that that person who will talk only about their children because they have nothing else to talk about.

So to me, that ad was just insulting, to both mothers and fathers.  It presented us with a world in which mothers did everything, fathers were not in the picture, and the women were expected to sacrifice not partially, but completely.  I see the parallels between parenting and working, and I have enjoyed some of the clever memes that have come across my feed, but this one was not clever.  It was cruel.  To moms who worry that they’re aren’t doing enough, to dads who are struggling to be accepted as caregivers, and especially to people who are looking for a freaking job!  Those poor people.  Yes, parenting is sacrifice, but sometimes the biggest sacrifice we need to make is the feeling that our kids need us to be totally focused on them at all times.  Try giving that up and see how everyone’s life improves.