Another blog from our resident author Mark Wilson. This will ring bells with all you working parents out there!
It’s tough being working parents. It’s tough being a parent at all, but when two of you have full time jobs, well sometimes it seems that you can’t accomplish anything in your daily life, can’t please anyone and just fail in every area of your life. My wife, son and I have all had a week like this.
Parenting is amazing. There’s so many opportunities to fill your heart with joy in a way that no other experience comes close to. From seeing your baby’s first smile, being enthralled by that little hand grasping your finger, examining every wrinkle in those chubby wee fingers, to the first time they call you “dada”, there’s nothing to beat it.
I could watch my son play, learn, tumble, hug, kiss, joke and run all day long and never tire of it. Sadly, life, especially working life all too often gets in the way.
Life for the working parent is a maelstrom of appointments, tasks, activities, work, more work, some sleep, and truly never enough hours in the day. As much time spent together as possible is the idea in our home, but it’s never enough. Don’t kid yourself, it’s tough for every parent when dropping your kid at nursery (even when you’re glad to see them go, and they themselves love it).
It’s difficult to listen to “I was always home with my kids” from the self-same parents who raised you to work hard for that professional career, with no clue as to how much of your life it would take, and only best intentions. When your kid is sick and you have to drop them at nursery or with grandparents and go to work anyway, a good parent you do not feel.
On a normal working day my family functions happily in this manner, spending lots of time together, and living for the weekends. My wife and I even manage some contentment and productivity in our demanding careers. This frantic balancing act and daily logistics is fine when everyone is well and where they are supposed to be, i.e. work, work, and nursery, but when the young one gets sick, or you all do, that’s when the carefully stacked house of cards falls.
There’s nothing worse than having a sick kid at home for so many reasons. Missing days at work and failing in the job, you work hard at. Going to work anyway and leaving them with a carer while they’re ill does not make you feel good. Being in another country while your child is at home with the other parent sick and asking for you. None of these things is easy to do, but is essential if we are to remain a family.
No-one prepares you for the massive upheaval, good or bad, that having a baby brings to your life. Equally, few people discuss how difficult life can be with two jobs and a child around. People are so willing and eager to just pretend that everything is wonderful and easy for them, perhaps for fear of feeling the failure even more. Perhaps because, maybe it just is easy for them.
As a devoted father, what I know is this. I love my wife, and I love my son. If finances allowed I would spend all of my time happily with both of them, but that’s not the world I live in. Instead, as a family we continue this precarious balancing act, of frenetic activity. Is it worth it?
Absolutely. No doubt about it. Is it a wonderful experience? A lot of the time, certainly nothing else in life can make me happy like being a dad.
Is it difficult?
Being a parent is at once the most natural and easy thing I have done in my life, but at times it is so incredibly heart-breaking, stressful, worrying and tear-inducing, it cannot be explained to those who don’t have kids.
That’s not condescension, it’s just a fact.
