How to be a successful working mother

My new job means I've gone up from 2 days a week to 3, which doesn't sound like a big difference, and I'm sure all you full-timers are sniffing and thinking how pathetic I am. However, it actually feels like quite a big hike to me; it's a 50% increase after all. I have to try harder to get to yoga, I'm not meeting up with friends so much, and we're eating less healthily at home. (It doesn't look too bad, when I see it written down in black and white like that!)

In all honestly, I think fitting any hours of paid employment at all into your life when you have children is quite a lot. I'm glad I've got a job, and in terms of hours and family-friendliness, I think I've got it pretty good. Most of the time it's fine, but when family life is under pressure for any reason, it seems like there's no slack at all. Maybe not everyone feels the need for slack in their life, but I do. So I've come up with some top tips for how to make it work, when you're a working mother.

1. Have your mother living round the corner  I can't tell you the number of times I've felt a pang of jealousy when a colleague tells me her mother does the dinner a couple of days a week, or helps out with the school run, or whatever it is. It's just free, top quality childcare, which can be turned on and off like a tap, with added emotional support from your biggest fan.
2. Have healthy children  Yes, it's fine to take a day off here and there when a child is ill, but don't have the kind of child who picks up every bug going. How will it be when you have a couple of days off this week, and next, and then in a month's time, and then again in another month's time? (This isn't a problem if you have your mother living round the corner, who can morph into a part-time nurse as required.) If you have more than one child, make sure they are all ill on the same day. If one gets a virus, and then passes it on to the other, you can be off for nearly a week as quick as a sneeze. This is, unfortunately, the norm.
3. Be healthy yourself  Because you're going to have used up all your workplace's goodwill for sick leave covering your children's illnesses.
4. Have children near each other in age  It makes it much simpler if you are dropping off at and picking up from the same school. Make them do the same activities, in the same place, at the same time. ("What do you mean, you don't want to do swimming? Of course you want to do swimming. Like your brother.") You won't have time to be a taxi driver AND work.
5. Go to bed really early every night  Otherwise you'll lose your temper when helping with homework or piano practice. After a day at work, who has mental space for that kind of thing? Early bedtimes are the only way.
6. Don't be in a job where you need to dress smartly  It feels nice, but you'll spend your hardly-earned pay-packet on clothes, because it's so easy to justify:"I need this for work, and I can afford it because I work."
7. Be a teacher  Otherwise, what are you going to do with the children in those long school holidays? Your five weeks aren't going to cover it, are they? If you have teenagers, you can leave them at home alone, but they'll be on screens all day, and will eat cereal for breakfast, lunch and early dinner too (and then not be hungry for the healthy meal you've made an effort to shop for in your lunchbreak).

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Dilemma

My two youngest have lovely soft blankets on their beds. Baby soft, furry, snuggly, blankets, with satin-feel borders. One in pink, the other in blue. They love them. Originally, the beds were made up with a sheet, and the blanket on top, but they prefer to sleep directly under their much-loved blankets. They just love the softness, the furriness, against their skins. The sheet has been eschewed (I love that word). If it’s cold, they will have a duvet, but over the top of the blanket, not instead of it. They sometimes bring the blankets downstairs, to snuggle under while watching television, and then they take them back up at bedtime, and wrap up like caterpillars on their beds, (and of course they drag the blankets along the floor, gathering dust and fluff as they go).

I’m happy that they associate bedtime with comfort and snuggliness. I do wonder, though, if it matters, having a bedding situation that is different to everyone else’s. It didn’t bother me in America, because I never worked out what was normal bedding. What’s a comforter? Is it a duvet, or a bedspread? Then what about a quilt? Do you put that on top of a comforter, or use it instead of one? And I decided early on that I wasn’t going to mess with the variety of pillows, of which you seem to require a huge number per bed, including a couple of “shams”, whatever those are. But now we’re back in the UK, I feel a need to opt into normalcy (disappointing of me, I know). What do you think? Is there a “normal” when it comes to bedding? Does it matter? Time for a survey, I think. Cast your vote. It's over on the right hand sidebar.

I would like to be a medieval peasant

I would like to be a medieval peasant. 11-yo has been learning about them in History, and I’ve decided I want to be one.

No waiting in for Telecoms Engineers.

No seven-week wait for internet access.

No phoning PlusNet because the promised router hasn’t arrived in the post. After seven weeks.

No having to take back a faulty mobile phone to Tesco to be exchanged.

No aggravating washer-dryer which shrinks your fleeces and your sons’ favourite team sports tops, even on the lowest setting.

No customer care helplines who purport to want to register your appliance so they can activate the warranty, but who in reality want the opportunity to sell you various options for extended warranties, which you can’t say “no” to until you’ve listened to the tedious details, because you’re too polite to interrupt someone talking at you in full flow.

No wrangling with moving companies about insurance claims for broken items.

No having to decide whether to start the laptop in safe mode or not, on the basis of less than zero knowledge of what that means.

No intermittent fault on the new microwave, so that it cuts out randomly. Alas, I see another customer care helpline in my near future. 

 

No having to set the date and time on endless appliances to the sound of electronic beeps.

No having to choose between thirty-five thousand different house insurance companies.

No lengthy forms to fill in register at a GP’s surgery.

No having to remember to put the paper between the name tape and the iron, unless you want a white sticky mess on the plate of the iron.

No having to going to Pilates.

And I bet a first class stamp didn’t cost 60p.

It’s back to the Dark Ages for me. Bring it on. Scratchy clothes, cold house, mud everywhere, matted hair, warty face. Untreated verrucas on your children’s feet. Wattle and daub (whatever that was). Nothing to look forward to except jolly wassailing at Yuletide, followed by the Black Death. I suppose I might miss my creature comforts, but at least no-one would say to me “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”