My husband is a hero, and I’m a Bad Mum: The struggle of an unequal return to work
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Not all heroes wear capes. Some, like my husband, wear sweatpants while bouncing a baby in their arms.
Now that, according to every single person in our lives since bub was born, is a True Hero (I honestly tried to think of a way to start this that didn’t sound so snarky, but I came up short, so we’re just going to have to roll with it).
My husband is a hero, and I’m a Bad Mum. And not the fun type of Bad Mum who has food fights in grocery stores, but the kind of Bad Mum who formula feeds and runs back to work the second they don’t pee when they sneeze*.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband. I truly do appreciate everything he does, and he does a lot (I went a full month without changing a number two—thanks, babe!). But until I fell pregnant, I also never truly understood the double standards that exist when it comes to parenting.
I always knew I wouldn’t take much time off work when our baby was born. I am a shy-extrovert—I don’t want anyone to speak directly to me, but I do want to be surrounded by people at all times. I also just love to work. It gets me out of my pajamas and gives me a purpose that goes beyond ‘watch every single Christmas movie on Stan’.
Even having a kid was a big leap for me. On the dating app where I met my future husband, my profile made it clear I didn’t want children. Now, this was never technically true. I just didn’t want kids as a woman. But a 1950s dad? That’s where I would shine.
When I fell in love, I realised pretty early on that my partner wanted kids. He said he was happy not to, but his eyes lit up when he saw his friends with their children, and I could just see the Brady Brunch version of our own future family playing across his vision. I knew, because I could see it too.
‘Maybe I’d be open to having kids if I can be the dad,’ I generously told him one day. After months of negotiation, we settled on 50/50. Equal parenting as best we could. This meant that the year off would also be divided between the two of us. Given my breasts and his lack thereof, I would do the first half. Then, he would do the second half.
Simple. Fair. Equal.
When I told work that I would only be having six months off, I got a lot of knowing smiles. ‘We’ll see if you want to come back,’ they said. ‘You won’t be able to do it, I know I couldn’t,’ other women told me. ‘That’s not long at all,’ people commented. When my husband told people his plan to take six months off to look after bub, the reaction was completely different.
‘Wow, that’s amazing,’ they told him. ‘How lovely of you!’ everyone gushed. ‘You’ve got yourself a good one,’ friends said to me in front of him. He did get the odd negative comment or two by some of the men at his work, who told him that six months was a long time—too long. It could impact his career. But aside from the few naysayers, the reaction to his paternity leave was resoundingly positive.
‘It’s not fair, we’re taking the same amount of time off and I’m getting judged and you’re getting held up as the gold standard for men everywhere,’ I complained to my husband one night.
He laughed. ‘You know, with all the compliments I’ve been getting, I have been going around thinking I’m amazing—but I never thought the same about you for doing the same thing,’ he confessed. ‘Because I guess subconsciously, it just seems like that’s what women do.’
And there it was. Women are expected to look after babies. Men are not.
Kaylia and family.
After I went back to work and my husband took over, every time I booked in an appointment for bub the doctor or nurse would ask, ‘and can your husband get time off work to come along too?’
‘I’m at work, he’s not,’ I reminded them.
‘Yes, yes, but can he get time off?’
The pressure to be home with bub didn’t just come from work and the medical system, but from other mothers too. When I went to get my hair done two months after he was born, I was asked with sympathy if it was hard to be away from him. I had been looking forward to it for weeks. A few hours just to read and drink tea while someone played with my hair? Yes, please! But as I looked at the sympathetic eyes of the women around me, a lie fell out. I was deeply ashamed for enjoying time to myself. ‘It’s really tough,’ I sighed, and they nodded knowingly.
My husband returned to work a couple of weeks after bub was born. His colleagues welcomed him back with jokes about how glad he must be to be getting a break from a newborn. Then it all went straight back to normal. He showed them the odd photo here and there, but for the most part it was business as usual.
When I went back to work four months after bub was born, I got asked if I was okay. ‘It must be tough to be away from him.’ No one was being cruel—it was all with the best of intentions. I was getting genuine pity, but the problem was that my husband could cheerfully go off to work and enjoy the time away from baby poo, while I was expected to be wringing my hands and fighting back tears of longing. It was supposed to be hard for me.
Here’s the thing: it wasn’t. Going to work is like a holiday compared to being home with a baby. I could get tea whenever I wanted! I wasn’t eating meals over a baby’s head! My arms were my own and I could stretch them however I pleased!
My breasts were no longer leaking or hard or throbbing with what could only be a brewing infection! And after nine months of vomiting up almost all solids and liquids, followed by major blood loss and sleep deprivation, it was nice to just be me again.
For eight hours a day, I was Kaylia. A sleepy Kaylia with a quarter of the brain capacity I used to have, but Kaylia nonetheless. I was always glad to give bub a big cuddle when I got home, and I did force my colleagues to look at photos of his adorable little face at least once a day, but I was just fine being away from him.
Like a man. A man can say that they prefer to be at work than home with a baby. A man can say that he likes the break away and people laugh or agree. When a woman says this, they’re either a Bad Mum or exhibiting signs of postnatal depression.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay that some women don’t like being away from their kids. That they want to stay home with them and soak up every moment. It’s okay that they find going back to work hard and miss their little ones deeply.
But I want things to shift so that it’s also okay if women want to go back to work as soon as physically possible, and heck, maybe even enjoy the break away. I want it to be okay for women to, once they reproduce, still have needs and ambitions that go beyond the home and family.
I want women to be treated in the same way as men—not judged if they returned to work, and treated like the True Hero they are if they choose to stay home with the baby.
That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Simple. Fair. Equal.
*That’s a joke. I’m always going to pee when I sneeze. Or laugh too hard. Or run.
