Full-Time at Home Parenting: Delight or Torture?

After I expressed some negative thoughts about being home with the boys in this post, some of my blogging friends (Kate and Alice) directed me to another post on the subject written recently by Dinka. Alice even went on to write her own post on motherhood and loneliness. I was also reading Articulate Dad's September posts and came across a post in which, among other things, he touches on the same subjects -- this time from the point of view of a father, so this is definitely not something only mothers feel.

Articulate Dad wrote:

[F]ull-time parenting . . . is a great joy and a tiring burden. Those who have never served as stay-at-home parents may simply never understand. I wonder at those parents who choose this life, embrace it, revel in it, thrive even. I respect them and admire them, but I fail to fully understand them.

and

It is not that I don't delight in being a father. But it is that my hands at times feel tied, my life completely overwhelmed by duty, one which keeps me from other things I might wish to be doing.
. . . Parenting is exhausting: perhaps less so for those better equipped for its rigors, or better adjusted to its demands.

I fully agree with the "great joy and a tiring burden" of the first quote, I tried to convey a similar idea in my title with "delight or torture." As for the choosing part, some people just don't really choose it, AD, they just don't have any other options, or make a personal sacrifice for the sake of their children. As for the second quote, I feel the same about being a mother most of the time!! The language he uses describes full-time parenting so brilliantly! The tied hands, the life "life completely overwhelmed by duty," I have felt them too. This constant duty is tiresome beyond imagination, some may, as he claims, be better equipped to deal with it, but I am certainly not one of them. Some people even have enough energy, discipline, and patience to home school their kids!! I'd love to do that, but I don't think I ever could ("unschooling" like Dawn does might be possible, but I'm not disciplined enough even for that).

The problem of loneliness discussed by Dinka and Alice, may have more to do with gender and the way mothers interact (or not) with other mothers. Dinka wrote:

But all the lack of free time and sleep aside the hardest part of all this is the loneliness. I don't care what they say but motherhood lived this way is just not right. Are we really supposed to toil away by ourselves day after day (uh and night after night) with minimal contact to other people, performing the tasks over and over while we pull all the creativity and inspiration and good cheer that is necessary to raise a human out of thin air[?]

I agree. It doesn't seem right to me either -- this is one of the reasons why the work that mothers do should be more valued and, if possible, compensated accordingly, as I have already argued here before. I especially like the part about raising "a human out of thin air."

She finished with some of the same thoughts expressed by Articulate Dad, but with a twist aimed at the other mothers who apparently "have it all together" and don't seem to want to start friendships with her:

I like doing my thing as a mother. I like the kids and the house and my own schedule, but I hate being on my own all the time. It's not easy to make friends, I'm aware. More than anything one needs to be ready to open up and show some vulnerability and take a risk. It's hard to feel drawn to a person who seems to have it all and all together. We're so busy keeping up appearances but then we all go home, sit by ourselves and wonder what if.

My comment to Dinka's post included: "The only thing that has kept me sane is blogging and blog reading... I also got to meet some blogging mothers who live in the Philly area." And this is true. Blogging and reading the experience of other mothers has been more than therapeutic for me, it has been life changing and has sustained through these difficult years of having very young children at home.

Sometimes I feel literally caged at home, since it takes so much energy to go out the door with two boys under 4. It's not easy to do grocery shopping and nearly impossible to do clothes shopping, for example, with them. Even when we do get the chance to meet with friends, it's very tough to conduct a conversation, since we always have to be paying attention to what the boys are doing. I'm sure this gets better when they become older, but parenting young children is "one of the hardest thing one can ever do" as I also wrote for Dinka. And to make matters worse, mothers don't really seem to get along with other mothers. I just wish I could still link to Chez Miscarriage's post and hundreds of comments about "Mommy Drive Bys."

Is there a solution for these problems? Probably not, but at least it's good to hear from other parents and to know that we're not alone, even though we may be painfully lonely.