We've all had crappy jobs before. In my house we had to start working summer jobs as soon as we were legally old enough to do so. I also graduated college in the middle of a big recession (kind of like this one) and couldn't find work for over a year. So in my time I've been a cashier at a hardware store, a book store, washed dogs, been a liquor store clerk, a waitress, and had many, many temp office jobs. I didn't like many of those jobs, but the beauty of them was that they were temporary. I only had to work them for a while, and then I could say "I Quit!"
The other nice thing about crummy side jobs is that they give you the opportunity to work outside your comfort zone, and to discover what skills you possess. They also teach you what skills you most certainly do NOT possess. And, after discovering all that, you can say, "I am not really suited for this job. I don't have the temperament or the skills. I think I will try something else." And then you do.
But there's a job out there that many of us enter into without any training or instruction manual. There's no trial period, no formal review process with the possibility of promotion, it's not a temp job, and we most certainly cannot quit this job. Ever.
It's called parenting. And it's a job for life. You don't get training, you don't get promoted, and you can never, ever quit.
And I find myself asking, what if we as parents really feel we aren't qualified for that job? What if, after trying it out for a while, we were able to say, "I'm really not very good at this. My skills don't fit. I don't have the patience/stamina/concentration/compassion/mental stability/financial support/BALLS for this job?" Shouldn't we be able to admit that? And yes, shouldn't we also be able to admit that all of us at one time or another have desperately wanted to say, "I quit?" Because we all have felt that way at one time or another. We all have.
And of course we don't quit. But it does amaze me that parenting -- which is arguably one of the most important jobs there is on this planet -- is the one job that we are all the least prepared to do.
If there is such a thing as intelligent design, then I'd have to say that equipping human beings with the equipment for creating life, and not equipping them with a handbook for raising it, was a pretty short-sighted decision. Maybe our creator, if he/she exists, wanted to force us to rely on each other to figure that out. And we do. We do.
Parenting. Something everyone says I'd be good at. Something I never had time for. I had a friend, long ago, say, "You're missing out on a major life thing!" I replied, "And you're missing out on whatever you might have been doing if you hadn't had kids."
ReplyDeleteI was just thinking about this exact thing this morning. NPR did a story last week about moms who "quit" - they left their husbands and children and moved across the country, to be a part time parent (summers and holidays). As tempting as that sounds - and it sounds really tempting some days- I don't think I could do that. I may not be the best mom, but I'm the best mom they've got. So, as much as I'd love to quit sometimes, I know I can't- it's simply not an option.
ReplyDeleteWe know that quitting is not an option, but there's a bit part of me that longs for the life I had before I was so largely defined by whether I reproduced or not. As DAH said in his comment, there's another life I could have been living without kids. That being said, I know quitting is simply not an option. But I feel strongly that as parents we should be all allowed to admit that we want to do it sometimes. It's a taboo subject that's never discussed, and I was trying to drag it kicking and screaming into the light.
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