Complaint: Mother Burnout

A few questions for the audience:

Why am I always the one left alone in the kitchen at the end of the day?

When everyone is out playing, why am I inside cleaning up their stuff?

Why does everything I have have to be for somebody else all the time?

Why am I the only one who knows we need toilet paper, milk, laundry detergent?

What would happen if I just stopped doing any of those things?

May I please have a turn?

Because the kids and the spouse, they always get top billing. God forbid I should want a career. Then I'm seen as selfish. If I don't aspire to a career outside my home, I'm perceived as an idiot. Staying at home makes me stupid and seeking work makes me selfish?

WTF?!

These ideas are not originally mine; they come from Kristin Maschka's great book I'm currently in the middle of, called "This is Not How I Thought it Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today" and I can see that I need to keep on reading, because from where I sit, there are a lot of mommas feeling the pressure. I'm hoping for some blueprints for my life, and the lives of my mother friends who are fried, taken for granted, and withering on the vine.

Who says mothers have to give up everything? Dads don't. People kind of humor you when you say you want to get out, do something for yourself. It's fine, as long as it fits in with your child care schedule. And even if you do get out or are already at work, who's going to do all the housework, the cleaning, the shopping, the doctors' appointments, the hair cuts, the dental appointments, the endless pick-ups and drop-offs, while you're at work? Guess what? You are.

Oh, hell hath no fury like a mother scorned.

I really feel like running away and joining the circus.

But they'd probably have me taking care of the kids and cleaning up urine there too.

So I guess I'll go read more of my book.