Monday, 1 September 2014

Should we continue this masquerade?

Some time ago I wrote about an article I'd read about women having to choose between being a homely mother and wife or wild social explorer. I've come to thinking about this again.

As women, what is expected of us and what happens when we don't meet these expectations?

This is most obvious when I have rare 'time off' from being a Mum and other parents are often shocked to hear me join in their conversations about children. I guess I just don't look like a Mum without the buggy. What is a Mum supposed to look like? I don't remember a uniform being included in my Bounty pack up on giving birth.

Much as I don't have a uniform for motherhood,  I do find myself wearing a range of costumes. By day, I am a professional, desperately hoping to instill and inspire a love of English in our young people. Post 5pm I've changed into my tired but enthusiastic Mum of a toddler get up. Except on the week night my Son is wuth his Dad. Then I put on my 'single 30 year old woman' costume. It's best I keep that one to myself; it's scary. Which one is truth and which are simply a masquerade?

There are two more costumes I've yet to mention: 'date night' and 'the friend.' These costumes speak for themselves and I find self asking whether, with such an array of costumes, we lose ourselves?

I am unsure as to whether it is possible for my character to be so complex that it combines no less than five huge elements. Am I really that labyrinthine?

What about my friends? Those who have children; is it the same for them?  Those without children; do they play the role of ever explaining as to why they don't have or want children? How tiring.

Speaking with a friend recently,  we came to the idea of what we should have done or be doing.  We SHOULD have children. We SHOULD raise them on a diet of blueberries, smiles and NO nasty TV. We SHOULD, SHOULD, SHOULD. Aside from children, we SHOULD want a big wedding. We SHOULD want the perfect little house. We SHOULD want the perfect husband and, if he isn't perfect, we SHOULD make him so. We have the ability to actually control the choices of others, don't you know?

We don't though, do we? We are only human and I suspect that the idea of should comes from ourselves. From within and from other women. Not men.  We pressure ourselves to be everything. Even my stay at home Mum friends feel they should (I'm tired of shouting at you) bake cakes, they should have a perfectly tidy house and they should be the perfect wife and mother. Do their husbands expect this? Possibly,  in some cases but I think it runs much deeper than this.

For years, we have and still are, fighting for our equality and mutual respect.  As such, we feel a need to justify our decisions: 'I stay at home because...' 'I work because...' 'I don't want/have children because...' and so on. It all comes back to the idea of should. Women feel they should have children because we can. They should be working Mums because their predecessors fought for these rights. Contrary to this, they should stay at home because their children need them. Somewhere within us, are all of the expectations of women of the past entrained on us? Confusing.

Should we really be using the word 'should' or could we ban it from our vocabulary? Just as we raid our costume cupboard, we could consider raising our lexicon for a more appropriate challenge.

*note: while writing this, my Son was eating blueberries,  half smiling and watching TV.

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