Demands

I try not to “death scroll” on social media, but like a lot of society, it happens far too often than I would like to admit. I like to think my feed is fairly innocuous as I engage most with fairly low drama-content, i.e. dogs, farm animals, cakes, recipes, home design, etc.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a video post of a lovely woman who was cooking a special dinner for her husband, along with wrangling what appeared to be her two small children. Innocent enough, but as I continued to watch, I saw this woman not only make a nice dish of chicken parmigiana, but proceed to make the cheese, from scratch. The tomato sauce, from scratch (from vegetables clearly grown in her garden). The pasta, from scratch. You get the drift. My initial thought was, “Wow, I could never.” However, I made the mistake of looking at the comments to find scads of comments, mostly from men, exclaiming that it was how women should be, or if women did more of this there would be happier marriages and less divorce. Again, you get the drift.

I am by no means a feminist. In fact, I probably swing a bit more the other way in celebrating that women were uniquely made to be a compliment to men, and to be a helper (scripture-based living) and honestly because I love and enjoy domestic pursuits myself. However, you would have to be completely unaware to not acknowledge that the demands on women have become astronomical and that even if a lot of women wanted to live that way, they can’t.

Since women started going to work some 70+ years ago, born out of necessity as most men were involved with the series of wars that ravaged the world at the time, they unfortunately never went back to full time domesticity. And while society tends to point the finger of “that is your choice”, the harsh reality is that we’ve created a world where a dual income is almost necessary (and that was true before the insane inflation and astronomical cost of living brought on in the 2020s). Sure, we could scale down to one income and scale down nearly everything else, but in all honesty, we’ve come to rely on two incomes not only to survive, but to create a safe, healthy and thriving home for our children.

And this is not easy. This is by no means an anthem for the working mother, but rather, a simple statement that women are tired. Tired deep in our bones from juggling demands. The last thing we need is a chorus of “you should be doing this” or worse, blaming our lack of domesticity for a crumbled marriage.

Somewhere along the way we were sold the lie that “you can have it all”. You can certainly have and do a lot of things… but at different times and with varying levels of success. In my career years I’ve been a working mom, a work from home mom, a stay at home mom, back to a working mom and now again a working from home mom. My observation is that ALL OF THESE ARE HARD. No one is superior or more noble in the decisions they make for their family. Most of the mothers I know are NOT selfish creatures, so whether they “choose” to work, stay at home or a hybrid of the two, I can almost guarantee they are doing the best they can for their families.

Women are such incredible, strong, inspiring creatures. My wish is that we can learn to rally for them, instead of rail them for what they aren’t doing or “should” be. The demands have simply become too demanding.

In the meantime, I’ve signed off from my full time job and I’m off to make dinner, which will likely be supplemented by something in a box or bag and not plucked from my garden (ahem, that died long before a fruitful harvest). And that, my friends, is okay.