Most of the articles being shared around facebook, at least by my other "average" mommy friends are articles like Babies Ruin Bodies, or Let Your Husband Love You. But this new viral blog entry had a much more negative tone to it.
I'm not sure I want to give it the credit and attention of naming it or giving you a link, instead I'll just share some of the quotes that particularly stuck out to me:
"Do people really think that a stay at home mom is really on equal footing with a woman who works and takes care of herself?"
"Having kids and getting married are considered life milestones. We have baby showers and wedding parties as if it’s a huge accomplishment and cause for celebration to be able to get knocked up or find someone to walk down the aisle with. These aren’t accomplishments, they are actually super easy tasks, literally anyone can do them...They are, by definition, average. And here’s the thing, why on earth are we settling for average?"
"If women can do anything, why are we still content with applauding them for doing nothing?"
"You will never have the time, energy, freedom or mobility to be exceptional if you have a husband and kids."
"I hear women talk about how 'hard' it is to raise kids and manage a household all the time. I never hear men talk about this. It’s because women secretly like to talk about how hard managing a household is so they don’t have to explain their lack of real accomplishments. Men don’t care to 'manage a household.' They aren’t conditioned to think stupid things like that are 'important.'"
"Women will be equal with men when we stop demanding that it be considered equally important to do housework and real work. They are not equal. Doing laundry will never be as important as being a doctor or an engineer or building a business."
Oh yes, she really did say all that... and more!
I realize that I am exactly the kind of woman that the writer looks down on. I met my husband when I was newly 19 years old, and what do you know, I married that man after dating for ONLY a little over a year. I (gladly) put my education on hold so that we could get him through to his engineering degree (graduation is in APRIL!!!). After a year and a half of marriage I had those crazy-woman feelings of wanting to be a mom, and 9 months later I was holding my son. I stayed at home with him, while watching other little kids, and what do you know, here I find myself doing it all over again, getting ready to meet our daughter in 12 short weeks.
I'm a wife. I loved a man so much that I decided to be sealed to him for time and all eternity. If you have ever felt anywhere close to how I feel about that man, you would know that those feelings are not average, they are beyond extraordinary. He is my very best friend. He is the person I feel most like myself with. I feel safe and secure and loved when that man holds me in his arms. His joys are my joys, his heartaches my heartaches. He is the one I want to share every success and every happiness with. We are a team, he and I, and that doesn't feel average at all.
There are days that are hard. It is hard to have a frustrated (almost) two year old yell at you, hit you, not able to understand you as you're trying to reason with him why he can't eat ANOTHER sucker, or why he can't play on mommy's elliptical, or why if I watch Shark Tale one more time I might throw a tantrum. It is hard to be so frustrated with such a little person and know they are just as frustrated with you. It's hard to feel like an inadequate mother/woman in those moments, you love this little person so much, these moments make your heart hurt. There are days when my son has been sick, those days are hard. Cleaning another person's bodily functions day after day is not my idea of a good time. Scrubbing puke off of little bodies, furniture, carpet, that makes for a long, hard day. Seeing your baby in pain, that is hard. We go without seeing my husband all day, as he is working on his degree and at his job. He leaves while we're in bed and comes home to the same scenario. Sometimes William goes days without seeing his daddy. That is hard. I knew there would be hard days, but that is all part of being an average, unexceptional woman
There are easy days too! There are days that my son and I have lounged around in jammies. We've watched shows and played with toys, gone to the zoo, swam at the pool, giggled and played and been happy all day. There are days that my heart aches for those mommies who work outside of the home but would rather be with their kiddos, because I know exactly what they are missing out on, days like these! There are incredible women out there, who work double time, those moms who work outside and in the home. On our good, happy, easy days, I feel a little twinge of guilt that I am able to sit on our couch and watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy (although this is only during naptime, after the house is clean, and usually while folding a load of laundry), I'm not going to lie. Then on some of the hard days I long for the escape of a job outside of the home...
Doing what I do may not be important or high on others' priority lists, but it is everything to me.
Perhaps the rest of my life will be incredibly average and I will never accomplish anything worthy of worldly praise, but if I can raise my son and daughter to be happy, strong, intelligent, good-hearted people, then I will feel like my average life meant something, and that it was extraordinary.
My only accomplishment may be getting my son to laugh... but if you have ever heard that boy's giggle, you know that it is not average, it is extraordinary!
