Which is why I don't have a paying job (I cannot make myself utter the words "I don't work" or "I don't have a job"-- I just don't get paid money for it!)
But at the same time, I'm an introvert, and there are definitely times when, after being around my kids 24/7 for weeks on end, I *long* for a job. Not for the money, not for the status or the supposed fulfillment of a career. Frankly, I dream of stocking shelves on an overnight shift. No, the appeal is a regularly scheduled time to go do something alone without talking to other people, nobody needing cuddles or reassurance, no household crises that everybody looks to me to solve...
I know how much of a fantasy that is, of course. It's just that even doing the "right" thing can have its aspects of imbalance. Modern homemaking is itself deficient in many ways-- even if I'm not away at a job, all my neighbors are, so it's in an empty neighborhood. My kids don't have the options I had in the 80s: within biking distance I had two aunts, four houses where my mom trusted the adults enough to let us spend the day there, several elderly neighbors we'd drop in on (whom my mom had known since her own childhood), my friend's grandmother who always had carrot cake, and the public library and the bay were in bike-reach as well. My kids? We live in a sketchy neighborhood, and all our relatives are at least 2 hours away by car. They have *none* of that. So they're at home more, and we're obliged to put them in the car and take them elsewhere to see relatives, have a non-ghetto social existence... in order to afford a safe neighborhood where they could have more physical freedom, I'd have to go back to work.
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Date: 2023-06-21 02:28 pm (UTC)Which is why I don't have a paying job (I cannot make myself utter the words "I don't work" or "I don't have a job"-- I just don't get paid money for it!)
But at the same time, I'm an introvert, and there are definitely times when, after being around my kids 24/7 for weeks on end, I *long* for a job. Not for the money, not for the status or the supposed fulfillment of a career. Frankly, I dream of stocking shelves on an overnight shift. No, the appeal is a regularly scheduled time to go do something alone without talking to other people, nobody needing cuddles or reassurance, no household crises that everybody looks to me to solve...
I know how much of a fantasy that is, of course. It's just that even doing the "right" thing can have its aspects of imbalance. Modern homemaking is itself deficient in many ways-- even if I'm not away at a job, all my neighbors are, so it's in an empty neighborhood. My kids don't have the options I had in the 80s: within biking distance I had two aunts, four houses where my mom trusted the adults enough to let us spend the day there, several elderly neighbors we'd drop in on (whom my mom had known since her own childhood), my friend's grandmother who always had carrot cake, and the public library and the bay were in bike-reach as well. My kids? We live in a sketchy neighborhood, and all our relatives are at least 2 hours away by car. They have *none* of that. So they're at home more, and we're obliged to put them in the car and take them elsewhere to see relatives, have a non-ghetto social existence... in order to afford a safe neighborhood where they could have more physical freedom, I'd have to go back to work.
Everything's a tradeoff.