Maternity Returning: Judgement

Reading of  Stacey Bendet  and her ‘return to work 6 days after giving birth to her 3rd child’ in Forbes. It was was not the time-frame of her return that struck me but something else. As an individual who is standing up for her right to parent in her own way, I was intrigued to read the words: 
“Some people like to veg out and sit in bed with their baby and watch movies all day but that’s just not me.”
As a ‘stay at home mum’ back in the day, I instantly felt judged in return. I suspect that most stay at home mum will identify with what I am about to say. I did everything but ‘veg out and sit in bed with baby’. I was inevitably up to my elbows in wallpaper paste as I renovated our home or knee deep in mud as I created a garden from scratch, as I engaged in what onlookers called ‘aggressive nesting’. This for me was a period of intense creativity, I didn’t get paid a CEO’s wage for it but it was however one of the most rewarding times of my life.
I think what I am taking from this is that even women are not allowing women to freedom to parent as they want. We have enough external agendas to work through in establishing how we truly wish to parent without adding perhaps the most potent of all. The judgement of other mothers is the cut that goes deepest in my experience. 
When our babies arrive there is a process of stripping away the expectations we had of ourselves and how it should be. There are layers from our own childhood, layers from society, layers from family and friends. There are layers that are emotional, spiritual, physical, mental and financial. We are needed by our child, by our relationship, by our support network and by our work. We have such a lot to process and accept and integrate that is new about our world. And once we have done that, in the blink of an eye, everything changes and we need to tweak and adjust and nudge it all back into balance once again.
The phrase ‘divide and rule’ sprung to mind as I read that Forbes article. I admire that the individual concerned is forging ahead and managing her work life-balance in such an admirable way. It is surely time that women were able to step right up to the board room, but, let none of us take such magnificent steps whilst slighting those who do it a different way. Might it be time to take the focus away from how others are parenting. When we are busy defending ourselves it is very difficult to love freely, to support our children fully or hear our own needs clearly.

Might it be time to quit in-fighting and instead support and admire the unique ways we each choose to parent. Holding the most important perspective in mind, that of the new person who needs our love, and discovering the very best way to provide that care, through a balance of work, rest and play, that is our very own? 

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