Parents Have the Most Important Job. Oh yeah?
Have you ever read or heard from others- usually working parents or mature adults- that, as a parent, and particularly a stay-at-home parent (and often a mom), you’re “doing the most important job“? Well, I know that deciding as a couple to raise happy, self-confident, open-minded, and healthy children, is one the most beautiful and challenging job two can take on, and friends and acquaintances seem to think that way too, but strangely, the world doesn’t seem to function as if that were the case? Or maybe, holding the most important job translates into: ” You’re on your own, baby “, or, to use VIP speak: ” It’s lonely at the top“…
The only Job with no Vacation, Pay or Training:
This “most important job” implies that you as a parent devote a significant amount of your time and energy to raising your children, between 20 hours a week to all your free time.
Often times professionals who become parents in the US have to make a choice between what they think is best for them personally and financially and participating actively in their children’s upbringing.
It’s not rare that remaining in the position they were in before having children means seeing their children little more than an hour or two a day, and some find that’s less than what they wish when their children are very young.
What it doesn’t entail, in my view is that you, as the parent who ends up not working or who works less than you’d like to personally, are going to be doing this parenting job around the clock, exclusively of anything else!
It seems like that’s what parents, often times unknowingly, sign up for when they have children in the US. Given the lack of affordable quality childcare and education, all except a priviledged minority are to stop most of the sort of intellectual and social activity they had prior to having children, and turn solely to playgroups, birthing and
parenting seminars and their kids’ activities to be able to have an adult conversation once again outside of their circle of friends and family.
Even though you may be holding “the most important job ” and you may have expected some recognition for this choice, just as a VIP is treated with some deference, you have in fact become the sole person responsible for your little ones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week- so now, you’re on your own, baby (or should I say, you and your baby!)!;-)
Try doing something else…
Try being a volunteer on the board of a non profit for instance. You have some time on your hands- supposedly anyway- and you’d like to use it wisely by helping a local non profit of your choice as a volunteer board member. Well, if you were that prestigious, Wall Street broker who has to travel from New York to San Francisco to attend the board meetings, you might just get reimbursement for your trip because travel is a deductible expense. But say you’re just a local parent who knows the issues, and has a genuine interest in helping out, and.. you need to get child care for those few hours? You pick up the tab baby! You’re doing the most important job, ain’t ya?
C’mon, I know being there for one’s children is important in this country, but is it important to be there 100% of the time? Couldn’t there be recognition that as parents, entrusted with our sacred task of producing the best citizens a country can have, we are allowed and hell, even encouraged to take a breather, either for ourselves or to be able to continue playing a role in our community outside of attending children’s ballet classes?
Say you wished to go one step further.. As a parent, you have a neat business idea that’d be compatible with your family life. You’d like to create an exercise studio cum coffee house where children can be cared for for a fee while parents enjoy flexing and stretching those sore back muscles for an hour or so…Don’t you have about a hundred people in mind already who’d kill for such a place? If you were that person starting a venture fund who needs to offer a good meal to a prospective client so as to help get those few millions you want to invest for her, you might well be able to write off that luncheon at Chez Panisse as a business expense.
But say you have to incurr child care expenses of $800 to $1,200 a month simply to research your market, make contacts with prospective clients and lenders and search for a location..? You pick up the tab, you most important job holder you! Yeah, it sure is lonely at the very top – especially among the few who do start a business under these circumstances!;-)
Now for the small (and lighter) stuff…
Mobility for VIPs and their trusted cargo:
Try taking a bus in the city by the bay…It saves on parking tickets and it’s less polluting, so given the option, why not? If you were so lucky as to be handicapped, obese or a senior, you’d get a royal treatment.. The bus would start making this beeping noise while the platform would descend to the street level while you royally mount the vehicule. But if you happen to be a ” most important job holder ” with one or more of your precious ones, well, you can : ” fold your stroller, carry ‘them kids up on the bus while holding the stroller with your third hand and those huge arm muscles you have as a VIP and hold on ’cause the bus is already moving and you haven’t paid and no one’s moving to give up their seat”.. ” Oh, and is Billy crying now ’cause you pulled on his arm? Please quiet him down”.
Next try going to Children’s Hospital in Oakland and parking where you can then roll your stroller out of the parking garage. Are you handicapped? Not officially. Are you a doctor here, a nurse? Nope, I’m holding the most important job, you see.. Well then you can’t park in those spaces that are on the street level, you have to go up and then find some way to get down those stairs (there’s no elevator you see) with a stroller and a three year old who doesn’t feel like walking…
It’s a tough job, the most important job they say, although if you were landing here from Mars, you may not know it..;-)
Written on Monday, July 14th, 00:15 AM. Happy Bastille Day – Free American families!
