In my fancy corporate job there was the vice president who sent a cab to pick up her sick 10-year old daughter from school.
Then there was the advertising agency owner who asked me if I really wanted to have this baby…when I was nine months pregnant.
And I would be remiss to omit the marketing business owner who never saw her own sons and didn’t know their schedules, friends, or, teachers.
And there was the uber honest corporate vice president who said she’d never have children because she said she didn’t have time for them if she wanted to “play with the big boys” (her words, not mine).
And just when I started my marketing consulting business after my first child was born, there was the internet whiz who asked me why I’d risk a promising career to have children. This was after she admitted to me that her own sons were more burden than joy and she looked to me for commiseration.
I can’t make this stuff up.
Many of the women I have interacted with and worked closely with in my 25-year career have not necessarily been role models, certainly not when it comes to balancing work and motherhood. Their vision of motherhood doesn’t match mine, which is fine so don’t think I’m wearing Judgy Judy’s pants here. Exponentially more women, and men, have served as fine role models, and I align myself with those people. But even then, the desire to balance does not always meet the ability to do so.
Somehow in this nation we see it as a badge to work our asses off. We eschew play in favor of work, and this even trickles down to our school system and how we approach education. It is not a badge of honor to say you only see your children on the weekends. To never sit down for a meal with your family or tuck in your children at night is not something to celebrate. I can’t say I’d shower accolades on anyone in those shoes. Living like that is messed up, plain and simple. And it’s downright sad, pathetic even. I understand that I have a purely white collar take on things here. There are myriad other issues for single parents, hourly wage workers, etc. I’m not applying my paradigm there. In the corporate world in the united States, there is an expectation that we love work first, or at least put work first.
It’s no secret that in America we have less time off than any other industrialized nation. We are high in stress and low in fun. There’s no time to relax, we say. There’s no time to take up knitting or curling or woodworking. There’s no time to read. There’s no time to learn Italian. There’s no time to be bored. There’s no time to just sit and sip a cup of coffee. There’s no time to simply chat. There’s no time to waste!
We dump this busyness onto our children as we overload them with activities and commitments, perpetuating this culture of busyness and adding to our own rising stress levels. Kids are going to and fro, nary a sit-down meal together in sight. There is no time for daydreaming, adventuring, or lollygagging. Everything is a planned activity, a sports practice, an instrument lesson, a scout meeting, a tutoring session, an art camp. We swirl in a haze of busy days at the office and impose it on our children. Our heads spin in concert with the plates we proverbially spin to balance it all.
It’s this insane culture of busyness that’s killing us. The stress transfer from parent to child and teacher to student and so on. We can’t slow down. We mustn’t slow down, for what will that say about us? In the workforce I cannot fathom how companies and businesses set such unreasonable demands on employees and how we all succumb to them. I understand we don’t all have flexibility. I understand that times are tight, futures not so bright. I understand it’s a mad, competitive world. But it’s wrong.
Neglecting our families, our marriages, ourselves is nothing to be proud of. We owe it to ourselves and our loved ones to do better and be better. There are adages about what we yearn for on our death bed and all that makes us rich can’t be counted. Busy is not better.
A lot to reflect upon