Have your say in the 2018 Mother’s Day survey

THEY are the questions men never get asked, like “How do you juggle work and home life?” or “Does your partner do an equal share of chores at home?” Tell us your views on being a modern mum in our 2018 Mother’s Day survey.

• Men can’t have it all, any more than women can

THERE are questions men never get asked, like how they juggle work and home life, if their partner does an equal share of chores at home, and can they “have it all”?

But it’s not necessarily because society is stuck in the dark ages.

It’s because women still do the lioness’s share of the child-raising and home-making and many, myself included, are quite happy with this arrangement.

Being a mum, with all the complexity and competing demands that this role has come to entail today, is a privilege.

Modern mums have to juggle a lot to “have it all”, but motherhood is still a privilege, writes Kylie Lang.

Certainly, we might struggle to juggle – I know I do – but having a broad brush of influence in our family’s lives and additional challenges if we also hold down paid employment means life is anything but dull.

It’s frequently frantic, but it can also be fabulously rewarding.

We can be writing business proposals one minute then passing off store-bought cakes as our own at the school bake sale the next.

And that’s OK, because “having it all” doesn’t mean having to be perfect.

It means that good enough is, well, exactly that.

As The Courier-Mail asks Queensland women a series of questions ahead of Mother’s Day on May 13, I can tell you that my answer to at least some of these is yes.

I’ve let my son stay home without me when I had to work.

I’ve knocked back promotions because of family commitments, and as for monitoring what my son does online, that’s something I still battle and he has just turned 18!

We mums deserve to be appreciated, respected and supported for the job, make that jobs, we do, and we need more employers who get this and respond with appropriate flexibility.

Every woman’s journey will be different, and parenthood is not a one-size-fits-all gig, but every journey counts.

What is your advice to new mothers? Are you the main breadwinner? How often do you feel guilty as a mum? Let us know in the comments below.