The terrible unspoken truth about having kids

MOST parents think it, but they’re afraid to say it. Ginger Gorman is bravely speaking out about the terrible truth we all hate to admit about children.

Parenting is not as fun as people thought it would be.

“LET’S face it, a lot of us thought we’d enjoy having children a lot more than we do,” my friend says.

It’s a stunning thing to say, and not because it’s untrue. It simply breaks every unspoken social rule about the way we choose to view mothers and mothering.

Just think of every gleaming washing powder commercial where a wholesome, fresh-faced mother delights in cleaning the house and washing her family’s clothes.

To me, she’s an archaic stranger. I don’t relate to her and never wanted to be her.

My father spent part of his childhood being raised in housing commission flats and ended up as an Australian diplomat. He was proud of me and believed my upbringing — so different from his own — offered a huge dose of raw opportunity that he had never been afforded.

“Go for the high wire,” he’d always say before repeating it again for emphasis.

It felt like an immense responsibility but a challenge too. If I just kept reaching longer and harder, I could grab the high wire.

That plan was a smashing one and it worked, until children came my way.

Let me clear this up early: my two little girls mean the world to me. I love them deeply. When my girls wrap their arms around my neck and hug me, I’m flooded with thanks that I have this chance to be their mother. I’m grateful not to have died before meeting them.

But how much of parenting do I actually enjoy? That is another question. For me, the small pleasures of parenting are frequently lost in a river of domestic drudgery. I often feel overwhelmed. Nothing prepared me for the endless, dull negotiations this brought on with my husband. We no longer sit up together telling stories or discussing the news. Instead we bark instructions to each other about who is putting out the garbage, doing the online grocery shopping or picking the kids up.

Nothing prepared me for the tedium of washing endless dishes, clothes and bed linen, vacuuming and the general level of grot and chaos. I’ve never become used to the complete lack of privacy, or exhaustion, or the patience required as a child continually nags or throws yet another tantrum.

Call it a first world problem, but I was caught off guard by the way mothering changes your identity, and I was at sea about how to put the mismatched pieces of my life back together again.

Parenting is not as fun as people thought it would be.

Last year I produced a fast-paced and successful radio morning show four days a week for ABC Local Radio. The shift started at 7am. At about 6am I would rise after an interrupted night to two hungry children under the age of three, push a pile of dirty dishes aside and throw some porridge on the stove. I’d attempt to stop my kids squabbling over a toy, pack some daycare bags, let the chickens out of their backyard coop in the yard, hurl some lunch in a bag, wipe down a sticky floor, drink a half-cold coffee and rub my eyes.

I might help draw a picture with one hand, while desperately trying to zip up my dress with the other hand. While their grubby fingers smear cereal on me, I might change one or both children into daytime clothes. Starving, unshowered, tired and wearing a now-stained frock, I jump in the car. I might desperately try to catch a few minutes of the news in preparation for my show, simultaneously wiping my face, underarms and dress with a baby wipe.

And then I might take a shallow breath and think: “Is this how it is? Is this what I signed up for?”

I daydream about a telephone conversation with Germaine Greer, Eva Cox or Anne Summers. I’d say: “Thank you for helping to break the glass ceiling. I’m really grateful. Truly. But please tell me how all this was meant to fit together, because I am lost.”

Once you say that juggling work and children is hard, there’s an inevitable 1950s-style chorus of tutting-tutting men and women bleating that you ought to delight in being at home with your children. And if you did, society’s ills would be cured. This misplaced pining for the suffocating values of a bygone era may partially explain why Australian mothers are not treated equally — at home or at work.

Of course, some women do love staying at home with their children and so do some men. But there is a myriad of personal, social and economic reasons why mothers return to work. And not least of those is that female workforce participation is vital to economic growth.

The former Governor General Quentin Bryce has famously told young women: “You can have it all, but not all at the same time.”

I agree with her. But as others have pointed out before me, no one suggests to men that having a relationship, children and a job is “having it all.”

And no one suggests to dads who find play dough, washing and bickering children insanely dull that they are failing in their duties as a family man.

The dial is turned up on pressure cooker equation of home and work by the idea that parents should spend more time with our kids, even though we are actually with our children more than previous generations. Add your own guilt and the judgments of other parents to this heady mix, and it’s a perfect nightmare.

I don’t have all the answers but we can certainly leave mothers room to enjoy the job of parenting. Or even better, give them permission not to.

Writer Ginger Gorman. Photo: Richard Tuffin

Ginger Gorman is an award winning print and radio journalist, and a 2006 World Press Institute Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @freshchilli