Accepting That You Parent in Your Spare Time

It’s the only way to steam out some of the parenting guilt

Guilt comes and goes, but it never really leaves you as a parent. Am I doing this right? Am I doing enough? Will my kid pay his shrink a fortune when he is a grown-up? All these questions revolve in my brain in a constant Brownian motion. And since the answers are in the range of “probably not”, “maybe”, or “very likely”, it’s easy to feel guilty about the way I’m handling it.

You see, I’ve been a freelancer for quite a few years now, and I knew I would be a work-from-home mom before getting pregnant. I thought I’ll nail it because let’s face it, I’ll be at home with my son all day, so it can’t get any easier, right? Wrong.

Parenting Is Hard Because We Look at It Wrong

One day, when I was supposed to work but just couldn’t — because of what Kristina God calls mother’s block, I decided it’s best if I procrastinate a little bit (I know, not the smartest thing, but hey, I was doing my best). That’s when I bumped into Lisa Kalkes’s article about how lucky the SAHMs are. So, it got me thinking — if it’s so great to be a stay-at-home mom and so challenging to be a working mom who heads to the office, how should you rate being a work-from-home mom?

(Before you start at me, I have to say this: yes, I’m aware that more than half of the planet had the chance to experience the work-from-home+parenting bandwagon this past pandemic year. But for me, it’s been a reality for nearly three years now, OK? So please, please forgive me if I look as if I haven’t noticed what happened to half the parents in the world; thank you very much for your understanding [gasps for air].)

The way I see it, we need to stop comparing ourselves and measure our difficulties’ levels in terms of who does what and from where. The problem isn’t with the “stay” or “work”, “home” or “office”. The problem is with the “mom”. The moment you become a “mom” (or a parent, to be completely honest and non-discriminatory), you get a new job and a new boss. It’s a 24-hour job, 7-days a week, 365-days a year.

Still, you can’t be a mom/dad, be you, be a housekeeper, be an employee, be someone else’s employer, or just be a human being who tries to find time for herself without also being a parent. What’s the workaround? You are a parent all of the time, but you parent in your spare time.

Once you realize that the most significant part of your parenting job is handled in your spare time, your perspective will shift to 180-degrees.

You are a spare-time parent. And that’s OK. We all are, even the millionaire parents who don’t need to work for a living.

You’d Better Take It Because You Certainly Can’t Leave It

You are a parent, you want the best in the world for your child, but you’re only human. Accept that most of the time, you need to cover your child’s basic needs — and block some time in your spare-time tiny calendar to work on the bricks that build your child’s long-lasting memories of a happy childhood, self-confidence, and resilience.

Throughout the day, there will be lots of moments when you’ll interact with your little one while showing far fewer resources than you’d like. And you’ll find a few moments a day when you can really make it count. Sprinkle everything else with tiny connection bits, and you’ll survive.

You could do it right or wrong. There will always be another way to do it, possibly even better than what you delivered. And your child may end up in a shrink’s office years later, no matter what you do — it’s a crazy world out there (I’ve seen it during the few times I left the house in the past three years).

One Sunday morning after breakfast, when my son was upstairs with his grandparents screaming his lungs out for me to come and take him downstairs, I had a breakdown.

I told my husband:

I’m doing this wrong. I stay at home, and this kid screams for me on a Sunday morning while I’m here, stuck with work that I need to do. I feel like I’m failing him. I’m not good at doing the house chores. I’m struggling with my workload. And I’m not spending enough time with Mathew. Other parents do things with their children on weekends! They spend so much more time with them than I do! How is this possible?

So my wise husband calmly replied:

Well, you’re here trying to catch up on your writing work on a Sunday morning because you’ve been spending your whole week with our son. No, other parents aren’t spending more time with their children. They still have lots of things to cram into their two non-working days. And just because they drag their kids with them and spend time together doesn’t mean it’s quality time or time they enjoy. Plus, it is what it is. We are the parents, and we need to work. We are lucky that we have the grandparents to help us. This isn’t a take it or leave it situation. It’s a take it because you can’t leave it situation.

Then, he went upstairs to calm down the dragon while I went back to work, motivated to make up for it in the afternoon.

We All Parent in Our Spare Time — It’s Only Human

We spend one-third of our lives sleeping, about another third working, and the remaining of our lives taking care of our basic needs and raising human beings that will hopefully not lead to the extinction of the human race and the destruction of the Earth.

We may give up on some of the sleeping time, although we know it also implies giving up on some of the time we’ll get to spend on this planet. Yet, we have limited choices regarding how much time we can spend with our children.

Here’s the good news, though — we are in total control of how we choose to spend the little time that we have.

Accepting our limitations is the first step in making the most of that time. It’s also the first step in feeling less guilty.

When you’re feeling guilty, you can’t focus on what you need to do, which could be working for a living or doing the things that keep your child alive. You’re less effective at it, and thus, you’re spending even more time on those tasks.

Take off your guilt clothes. Do what you need to do, to the best you can. And then, go spend some time with the person you love most on this planet (here I’m making an assumption that it’s your child :D) and make that time count!

One of my favorite copywriters, Carline Anglade Cole, shared a story in her book — My life as a 50+ year-old white male — about how she managed to keep working while her three children were small. Basically, she set up an office in the basement, and while the kids were young, she put a sign on it during her work hours — “Don’t come in here unless you’re bleeding”. And when they grew older, she added to that message “…from your eye!”. (note, the children wheren’t simply left unsupervised, but in their father’s care, during what their mother called “mommy needs to make money” time).

That’s what I call doing what you need to do, so you can make time for the things you want to do. I know it’s easier said than done, but I’m certainly motivated to keep trying. How about you?

Before you leave… Take a peek at my other articles: