Is it possible to maintain domestic order, raise well-adjusted children, pursue a career, pay attention to personal grooming, and still retain your mental health?
I used to think so. Now I suspect that the Superwoman that manages all these things is an urban myth. Surely only celebrity Yummy Mummies (with their bevy of paid staff) manage to have immaculate houses, size 8-10 backsides, fulfilling careers and well-groomed offspring… all at the same time. Personally the rigours of wifedom & motherhood often leave me feeling washed up, burnt out or stretched to breaking point. Not to mention being in constant desperate need of an extreme makeover. At times the thought of another day spent juggling a part-time job, toilet training, homework, housework, & after school sport is enough to book myself in for a frontal lobotomy. On those days the urge to run around screaming ‘stop the world – I want to get off’ or alternatively to curl up in the foetal position in a dark room, is frequent and intense, and only held at bay by the consumption of much calorie-laden comfort food.
And it’s not just occasional binge eating I need to confess. I don’t bake, I can’t successfully cover schoolbooks with contact, and I’m still getting zits despite the fact that I’m old enough to have visible ‘fine lines’ (surely that’s one of life’s great injustices? I would have thought there’d be at least a decade between acne and wrinkles).
I can’t parallel park, I let my legs get quite hairy in winter (okay, honestly, not just my legs, and not just in winter), and despite my status as a respectable married woman I really can’t hold my liquor. I’m always late for work, I’ve never managed to convince my children to eat broccoli or pumpkin, and sometimes I let them play x-box, in their pyjamas, before breakfast.
Why make my shameful inadequacies public you ask? Why share my tales of domestic and social ineptitude? Maybe I feel that the recent influx of glamorous mothers on our modern landscape has left the suburban soccer mum voiceless. Maybe I feel that my disenfranchised sisters need someone to stand up and say “It’s okay if you can’t bare your midriff and retain your dignity simultaneously.”
Or maybe I’ve just discovered that writing a column makes for excellent housework avoidance.