2. We are only hearing one side of the story

Most mothers, yours truly included, don’t like to share our failures.  We like to tell about what we are doing well, what we have accomplished and it is inevitable that sometimes we ‘exaggerate’ by making things sound so easy (which in turn makes us look absolutely clever and accomplished).

Who, in her right mind, likes to broadcast about the day when everything went wrong and she screams at her children, vent her frustration at her husband, and was upset because she feels fat and every piece of clothing in the wardrobe makes her feel unattractive?  Who, in her right mind, would share with the whole world about the days when she does not feel particularly motherly and wish she could cold turkey her toddler off the incessant night feeds?

So whenever you see somebody and are about to worship her as a SuperMom, remember that she also goes through days of complete chaos when her children drive her up the wall, the dinner is burnt, and she feels depressed and useless.  Just that she probably won’t tell you about it.

We all have our good days and our bad days.  It’s a pity that we are not sharing more of our struggles and encouraging one another by sharing our weaknesses.

3. Something’s Gotta Give

Long time ago, I read an interview of a very famous career woman in Singapore.  She was one of those Who’s Who highflyer.  The interviewer asked her something about not having more than one child.  Her answer, which I cannot remember exactly, was something to the effect of her not believing that one can have a successful career and still focus on the family, giving both a hundred percent.

I started off as a SAHM and somewhere down the road, I went back to work.  Because I took the opposite route as most mothers do (ie from home to work, vs from work back to home), I knew first hand how much I was sacrificing by going back to work.  If I had been working all along, I would not have known how much was sacrificed as there wouldn’t be any form of comparison.  The fact remains that something’s gotta give.

Career vs family aside, if we just look at the number of things we juggle, again, something’s gotta give and nobody can cover all grounds.  One mom may choose to spend more time with her children doing things like fun activities and field trips.  The result could be that the house is not as clean as she would like it to be.  Another mom may strive to keep the house spotless and cook every single meal fresh on the very day.  Consequently, she may need to leave the tv to babysit her children a little more.  It all boils down to the choices we make and our priorities.  Therefore, before we admire another mom for, say, homeschooling all her children, we should also remember that some ‘opportunity cost’ is incurred.  I am not saying that the homeschool mom is not admirable.  What I am saying is that we all make our choices based on our priority and along the way, inevitably, we incur some ‘opportunity cost’.  It’s the same for everyone of us.  “SuperMoms” don’t have immunity.

That said, being organised and hardworking does help.  It is only natural that an organised and hardworking person can hold more things together compared to an disorganised person who prefers to lounge half the day away and can't seem to find things around the house.  I suppose one can say that to juggle many things, the ‘opportunity cost’ is the luxury of lounging around.