For my school's 50 year anniversary I was asked, along with everyone else who ever went to the school, to put together a little blurb about what we "do in the world" now and what we got from the school along with a picture from then and one from now. As I was writing I was overcome with the depressing feeling that what I'm doing looks insignificant and incredibly boring. Despite paying lip service to rights of women to choose whether they worked outside or inside the home, I remember feeling scathing about women who gave up work when they had their kids. I felt like they were taking the easy way and although the work of bringing up children was important it also rotted ones brain and made one insular and concerned only with ones immediate environment. I think I have internalised my anti-full-time-mother stance - as I was writing I kept wanting to defend and justify by talking up the work that I used to do before I became a mother. I wanted to let people know that I used to be well paid and well thought of in the work that I did. This is not the first time I've felt negatively judged or wanted to let people know that I wasn't always 'just a mum' but this is the first time that my internalised mum-a-phobia has been this clear to myself.
I'm not sure where I want to go with this, but I suspect it's time for me to re-read Alison Osbourne's book 'The Post-Baby Conversation' to try and sort through a few things. I wonder what else is on the reading list for the course on cutting oneself a bit of slack?
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