I woke up in the middle of last night with the thought in my head that I made a mistake in my post ‘Sadderdays’ (September 12). I wrote: ‘I don’t go out to work.’ That’s not strictly true in any sense. What I should have said was, ‘I don’t go out for paid work.’ I work at home, whether it is the dull grind of cleaning, cooking and caring for my family, or the much more fun round of writing poetry, critiquing the writing of others, and editing my long-in-the-making book. In the past ten years I took three A levels, a degree, and sundry other short courses. I am also involved in volunteer work at a local school and church. So when I said, ‘I don’t go out to work,’ I sold myself short.
This is not by way of being a post about how great I think I am, but about how the choice to stay home when my children were born was deliberate, and one I have never regretted; not even on dusting days. I am grateful to the women’s movement because it gave me that choice: if I had been born a decade or so earlier, it would perhaps have been forced on me. Would I have resented it? Possibly. I don’t and can never know. What I do know is that the moniker ‘homemaker’ irritates me almost as much as the word ‘gobsmacked’ or the grocer’s apostrophe (or should that be ‘grocers’ apostrophe’?).
Saying ‘homemaker’ implies that all of those women who choose or have to work are not homemakers. Presumably they live in expensive mausoleums. I have several friends in paid employment who would strongly object to that – and some of them have cleaner homes than mine, despite putting in a full shift every day. They love their own children and husbands as much as I love mine, and make warm and welcoming homes for them and their friends.
I also object to the term, ‘I’m just a housewife.’ The power of one little word to belittle a 24/7 job is incredible. I say 24/7 because those of us who choose and are fortunate enough not to have to go out to work, tend to do everything in the home. That’s the way of the real world. The Hub was great at looking after the kids when he was well and working and home, but he wasn’t often home: between travelling sub-Saharan Africa for weeks at a time, running his own business, coaching under-14s at football, refereeing, and setting up and running the MCFC Supporters Club of South Africa, he maybe had fifteen minutes or so a week for us, and a man’s got to relax sometimes, hasn’t he? All right, I’m exaggerating, but it’s true in its essentials: I did the housework, kids, etc., and he brought home plenty of dosh. That was the deal we made when we decided to have children, and it worked for us. Call us old-fashioned: I don’t care. We had agreed when we first got married that if we had children, one of us would stay home and one of us would work (whoever was earning the most); what mattered was that one of us would always be there for the children. Fortunately for me, the Hub was earning a lot more, so I drew the long straw.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when Spud leaves school. He doesn’t need me that much, even now, and it won’t be long before I’m applying for jobs and putting on my application form: made redundant from motherhood.
I know it’s not fashionable or pc to say – or even think – that I like being at home with and for my children, but you know what: I do.
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