An Unexceptional Blog

This last year, my husband and I made the decision to send him back to school. Basically, he is working full time, and, he is going to school, with an almost full-time course load, which he is completing remotely, from home. He will be doing this until late spring of next year, at which point he will have a master’s degree in his pocket. I am incredibly proud of the work he is doing. He is ensuring that he can move into a career that is an actual passion of his, and it will help us as a family in the long run. 

What is important for your to know, dear reader, is that we are doing this as a team. He and I both know that this is indeed a team effort. When we are done with work for the day, he heads down to our office to work on his school courses, and I take care of everything else. He works on assignments and learns incredibly difficult concepts;  I prep and cook dinner, make school lunches for the next day, and get through the bedtime routine (bath-book-song-bed) on my own. I also mitigate all the “But I had it first!” and the “She won’t leave my room!!” My husband can usually makes it upstairs for the books and songs, before tucking the girls in for the night. There are about two nights a week where he is present for the whole affair, from dinner until bedtime, and tasks are divvied up between us accordingly. We look at each other, and thank each other, every day, because we know that we are each doing our part towards a same goal, a same future. 

When sharing our future plans with our families, however, only my husband’s work is acknowledged. Only he gets recognition for the time he sacrifices, and the hours he is putting in. 

My husband gets congratulated, because he is doing visible work; it is visible work that will finish with a visible accreditation, a paper, that proves he has done the work. No one is thinking of the invisible work that I do. I admit, dear reader, that I am jealous. I overhear video chats  between him and family members: “We are so proud of you, you are working so hard.” What of my part, in all this? What of my role in this team effort? What is incredibly infuriating is that even when I tell the women, the mothers, in my life, about this undertaking, they ask me to tell my husband how proud they are of him. Do they give so little value to their own labour that they can’t see the value in mine? How is my invisible labour invisible to them also, when they have lived it before?

My husband is eternally thankful for what I do. He knows the value in all of the work, the invisible work that I put in towards our shared goal. He knows that this goal is only achievable because we are both working at it with all we have.

But, the society we live in, including our elders and our family members, discount a mother’s work, a mother’s sacrifice; this work as assumed, it is a given, it is taken for granted, it is expected. “Well of course she is going to take care of the children.” And so, she doesn’t need support, she doesn’t need help, she doesn’t need validation. 

Dear reader, could someone give me a degree, when my girls have grown? Can someone give me a paper that proves all of the work I will have put in? Can I be credited for all of the tears, all the sleepless nights, all the trips to the hospital, all the Bandaids on booboos, all the homework and school projects made, all the laundry washed, all the meals prepared, all the lessons taught about respect and empathy, all the walks to the park, all the overstimulation, all the feelings of being over-touched, all the parenting books read, all the generational traumas broken, all the love eternally and irrevocably given? 

I am not looking for payment, dear reader, but recognition. I did the work. Let them give me a paper to prove it, if this is what the world needs to validate the work mothers do. Let them give me Mother’s Certificate to make my work visible.

And maybe, just maybe, and perhaps selfishly, I could get some of the “congratulations” for myself, too.