Bastard!

I went to a new dentist a while back & had to fill in the obligatory forms & was confronted with something new—the occupation line. I had just resigned a few weeks before from my position to become an official full-time mother, but in the interim I hadn’t really formalized my transition. You see, prior to my resignation, I was on maternity leave. Before that I was employed, albeit part-time, & had an official title.

Now that I’d crossed over to the mother zone, I had lost my legitimacy as a person, except nobody told me. I wrote SAHM/artist on the occupation line. When I submitted the form to the receptionist she laughed & said, “So should I put domestic engineer as your title, or what do you people like to be called nowadays?” I didn’t even know how to respond because I was so stunned. I wish had a smug retort but nothing came. I just said that mother would do.

There have been a few other instances where I have felt that people have treated me with disrespect upon learning that I am at home full time with my kids. People comment that I’m wasting my degree & talents, that it must be nice to be at home, like I’m on some extended vacation, eating bon-bons on the couch. My manager told me to use my time wisely, like I was in time-out or something.

Since when did exercising choice, which I believe the second wave of feminism promoted, become a bad thing? I have always felt that my ability to choose my path, in whatever form, was my prerogative, as opposed to a life of enforced & inescapable servitude. It appears that a strange dichotomy has emerged instead—the working versus stay-at-home mom divide. If you stay at home, you are somehow rejecting what many people mistakenly assume feminism has attempted to promote.

Good thing I could care less what people think about me. The proof will be in the pudding as they say….