A Mommy Connections Halifax guest post:
After meeting with Karine Ewert of Today’s Parent magazine, I got thinking about what it means to be a 21st century parent. Karine was in Halifax appearing on the CTV morning show talking about just that. How are the challenges of today unique from previous generations? How are they similar?
Karine pointed out a lot of things that are unique to today. Striving to achieve a balance, while trying to do it all and be good at everything, cannot possibly be manageable. There really is no perfect balance. We once fought for the right for women to enter the workplace, but I’m not sure it has been entirely to our benefit. There is a real struggle between the stay-at-home-mom and the working-outside-of-the-home mom to reconcile their choices often under societal pressure. For some the answer is to hire a nanny, for others, it’s child care centres, for others it’s working part-time or maybe even working from a home office and bringing in a child care provider part-time.
When I was at home with my children I often felt guilty for not being a strong feminist in the workplace, and when I was at work I often felt guilty for not putting my children/family first. We do this to one another. We hear it in the voices of those on the other side of the fence, judging us for making the choices we made. We need to cut ourselves a little slack. It is only possibly to achieve the balance we seek if we give ourselves a break. Let’s not strive to be all-things. Lets strive for the happy chaos, as Karine put it. The thing is – that which makes one mom happy is not going to be the same for every mom, and that is okay. It is as it should be.
I shared with Karine my desire for a Mom of the Year award to go to the everyday mom. A mom who is struggling but somehow finds their happy place by simply accepting things for what they are. She agreed that the best we can do as Moms is for us all to recognize that we are doing our best. To take joy in the everyday moments and to celebrate that we’re parents. Not all of us get to be. We have to remember that we’re all going to have bad days – some days are just easier than others.
There is still time to nominate the mom in your life for Mom of the Year. Deadline is July 8th though, so act fast!
There is also one day left to enter to win $50 or $25 in Walmart giftcards on my previous blog entry: Mom of the Year vs Supermom.
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