What does it feel like to raise children in a society that doesn’t honor motherhood?
It’s waking up in the middle of the night for years. It’s being puked on and yelled at. It’s driving to play dates and classes and Girl Scout meetings and play practice and Taekwondo and piano lessons. It’s grocery shopping with a little kid and a baby who won’t stop crying until you sit down in the patio furniture on display and nurse him. It’s having your kid puke in the middle of the produce section or in the park district pool.
It’s ending up in the public library bathroom with only hand dryers and no paper towels trying to clean up your kid’s face after a bloody nose, which you tried to control with a disposable diaper over her face because you were out of kleenexes.
It’s navigating friendships and emotions and schoolwork while you’re trying to scrub the toilet.
Then, as payment, it’s sitting down in an office with your tech guy husband to get a loan for a new car. Which you have done in the past with no issue. In fact, a whole house was purchased with no issue. But this time, the paperwork doesn’t say, “homemaker.” It says, “retired” and lists your income at $500/month. When you say there’s been a mistake, the woman behind her desk with her hydro flask and ill-fitting suit will laugh and say, quite condescendingly, “No one is going to give a loan to someone without a job.” (And your husband will chuckle rather than defend you.)
You will refuse to sign the papers because you won’t lie on a legal document.
Now your name isn’t on the new car and you have realized just how much value society has put on the last 15 years of your life.