I’m amazed by moms, sometimes.
Go out on a Saturday to the zoo and really appreciate how prepared some of those moms are. 5 minutes per animal, 45 on the playground, in and out of the zoo in 4 hours exactly. The stroller is clean and free of debris, and there’s a cooler full of water bottles and snacks tucked neatly under it. There’s a schedule; there’s order.
…and there’s me. I’m the parent whose toddler is eating leaves while the older kid tries to climb into the meerkat exhibit.
It’s interesting how being stay-at-home parent can still give you an inferiority complex , even though you’re almost totally isolated from other adults. Like a castaway concerned whether his tattered rags are in trendy summer colors. Over the years I’ve worked with bestselling authors and people who would go on to win Emmys. People who were routinely recognized on the street. It’s easy to feel inadequate in that situation. The closest I’ve ever come to being recognized on the street was overhearing a pair of awestruck kids discreetly pointing at me and whisper-shouting “I THINK THAT’S SANTA!!” That’s a kind of recognition, I suppose, but not the kind that constitutes an impressive LinkedIn profile.
If you’re married the feelings of professional inadequacy start with your spouse, obviously. Nothing really feels like a counterbalance to their actual job. My wife has RESPONSIBILITIES. Meetings. Seminars. Out of state travel for more meetings and seminars. I, meanwhile, have seen every episode of Bluey four hundred times and routinely get toddler urine in my hair.
I do laundry all day but wear the same clothes so long I barely produce any dirty clothes. I think I’ve had on this hoodie since Halloween, and the jeans so long I’m worried I may be in the process of absorbing them into my legs like a jellyfish digesting a sardine. This is no way for an adult to live.
I sometimes wonder if I should start filling out more paperwork just to feel on the same footing as my wife. Would the IRS mind if I submitted a 1040 and just drew little frowny faces wherever there was supposed to be a blank to fill in with my income? Hopefully there are some extra forms for that to really make it the kind of long, convoluted process that’ll let me relate with other working adults again. Maybe the baby and I could find out our enneagram types together to make this feel more like a workplace. “Looks like you spilled juice on the written test, and during the verbal section, answered every question ‘Doggy!’ I’m calling that a type 2 with a 3 wing.”
The natural remedy for that would be to get closer to other stay at home parents, but, as I mentioned, it’s clear that the moms I encounter and I are playing in entirely different leagues, if not different sports altogether.
It’s obscene what other parents manage to accomplish in a day. How do you make it to the park every day with a kid whose hair is combed like some of these moms? I show up in a dirty car with a disheveled kid, with my clothes covered in dinosaur stickers and, like, a corndog stick tangled in my beard. I feel like that’s what parents of toddlers are supposed to look like. It’s what EVERYTHING small children interact with looks like. You can’t be clean around little kids. They exude a cloud of dirt, vomit, and little broken bits of Cheez-Its. Every kid under 5 is like watching the origin story for a future episode of Hoarders.
…and yet, there they are: park moms. Hair combed, teeth brushed, clothes that were presumably still on a hanger that morning, and with CROWDS of kids. You’d think they were trying to put together a baseball team. Just child after child after child, all neat, all with last names for first names, all with their own labeled water bottle brought from home stashed in the ‘park snack bag,’ which somehow became a thing since my own ‘drink from the hose’ style childhood. What in my pantry could I even have to put in a park snack bag? Canned soup? Uncooked rice? Where are these women getting all these oranges and Fig Newtons? I can’t imagine the planning that goes into this. They must schedule trips to the bathroom 3 weeks in advance.
I don’t mean to imply that stay-at-home parenting is a bad gig. It’s a really great gig; I haven’t enjoyed this level of cartoons and dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets since my early 20s. There’s still plenty of work, though, and there is simply not a format for sharing your successes in a way that puts you on level with other adults. Cleaning the floor of a kid’s closet should come with an award. It’s like mucking out the Augean Stables, except you also have to sort out a zillion loose puzzle pieces and you’ll definitely step on a Lego.
What jobs like cleaning a kid’s closet really lack, however, is some kind of arbitrary professional certification or the ability to get you in the door if you’re interviewing to become a brand manager:
“Do you excel while in working in difficult situations?”
“Difficult? You bet! I stepped on so many Legos last week than my wife thought I had stigmata!”
[Sound of resume in a shredder]
All that to say, if you do know someone who spends all their time with kids, try to really foul up something we’re good at. Make an inedible meal, fold some laundry wrong, change a diaper in a way that requires a lot of hand washing after the fact…we’re all a disheveled mess and need to know that we’ve got some skills that other adults aren’t automatically good at. Having to reload the dishwasher after you botched it is as good as a birthday present.
…and if you happen to be married to one of those perfect park moms, throw a handful of dirt in her purse for me. Get on my level, Susan.
Feel free to buy me a cup of coffee at paypal.me/inessentialreading if you enjoyed the column.
Inessential Reading 