Everything and nothing

Back in 2001, at the age of 25, I had a career crisis. I was working as a Training Manager for a large retailer, and they had recently introduced new systems for training staff through a structured programme. I was working with this programme day in and day out and was thoroughly versed in its application and use. Then head office invited applications for someone to run this programme nationwide. Perhaps naively, I applied for the job. I had no tertiary education, and was relying on my extensive experience to make me the best person for the job. But I wasn't. When I spoke to someone at the Human Resources department they told me that were looking for someone with a degree in Industrial Psychology. I was upset. Frustrated. Annoyed. And then I decided I needed to take action.

My husband and I were still renting our house, and the overwhelming societal message was that we should be buying. I wasn't sure how that was going to happen while I was still in a relatively low paid retail job. I was smart and knew that I needed to keep growing and learning so I wouldn't stagnate.  So I decided that I would look into doing some part time education in the Human Resources sector, get a better job and buy a home within the next ten years.

And then I unexpectedly fell pregnant.

We were surprised, but not unhappy. Children were always on the agenda, but the timing caught us off guard because our financial situation was not secure in the modern sense of the word. We didn't own a house.

Of course the model that my husband and I had both grown up with was with a stay-at-home mother, and the idea of going back to work with a small baby was unthinkable. At that time there was no paid parental leave anyway, but I did what most mothers did at that time, and that was to apply for and take the one year's unpaid leave. It turned out that in that time my role was phased out, so I would have had no job to return to anyway.

Pregnancy was easy, but I had a difficult and very, very long labour. I didn't sleep for over 48 hours, and after that I had a newborn who needed feeding every few hours. I remember feeling stressed by the relentlessness of his needs when I was so, so tired. Breastfeeding didn't come easily, and in the second week I was expressing milk because my nipples were so damaged. My son was bringing back milk with blood in it when it was at its worst.

I struggled with adjusting from full time work to full time motherhood, and to ease this transition I worked part time on the weekends from when our son was four months old. At first, I worked at my previous employer, and a few months later I found a better paying job somewhere else.

When our son was thirteen months old I found out I was pregnant again. In early 2003 I resigned from my job, and did not work outside the home again until 2008.

But what was I doing in all that time?  I became occupied with child and community oriented jobs. I joined a local Playcentre, helped as a session supervisor and participated in training in order to hold a qualification that enabled the centre to retain its license. I helped run a mother-to-mother support group, offering support and empowerment to other mothers.  I researched early childhood options for our son as he approached his third birthday. I had no car some days of the week, so I walked my son to kindergarten and back three afternoons a week. I breastfed the baby, I planned meals, I researched and prepared healthy food options for my family. I cleaned the house. Money was tight, so I made meals from scratch and researched how to make money go further. I took the children to Plunket and the doctor.

In 2004 the old societal guilt trip about not owning a house reared its head again, so I started applying for jobs and researching daycare. I was offered a job by a former colleague from my retail days, but I remember standing in the middle of the local fruit shop with my then eleven month old and realising that I couldn't in good conscience put him in daycare at that age and so I turned the job down. The house would have to wait. Or not happen at all.

In 2006 we moved to a whole new suburb, and not long after, our daughter arrived. With a four year old and a two year old, I researched local early childhood centres, visited the local kindergarten to get a feel for it, did all the paperwork so that our son could transfer from one kindergarten to the new one. As he approached his fifth birthday, I accompanied him on school visits. I enrolled him at school. I took my son to school and home again, as well as taking his brother to kindergarten and caring for a new baby, who mostly just fit in with whatever was going on. I took on many jobs within my volunteer mother-to-mother organisation, which enabled me to be involved in community service without compromising my children's care while they were small.  I worked part time as a homebased daycare educarer, which meant I could earn myself a bit of pocket money, but again, not compromise the needs of a baby and preschooler.

In 2008 I found a job outside the home, and decided to apply for it. It was in a public library, and it was the best job I have ever had. I found it encompassed all the things I enjoyed about retail, yet none of the negatives. I could be of service to the community, but didn't have to aggressively sell anything. My husband looked after the children so we didn't need to utilise daycare.

In 2009 our last child arrived. But this time the country had moved on, and I was able to take advantage of four months of paid parental leave. Most of it was lost in a blur of worry and stress over a baby that would not feed properly and not put on weight. I was able to go back to work on reduced hours, and ease myself back into my usual two full days a week by the time our son was six months old. I was working on my husband's days off so that we didn't have to utilise daycare, and our small baby could still be in parental care. Eventually the strain of one of us always being at work, alongside growing boys' weekend sports commitments meant it was time to move on to a weekday job. As it happened, my children's school had a vacancy for a library assistant, so I approached the school principal about taking the role, and she agreed to me taking it.

I was devastated about leaving the public library job, and hoped that I might be able to return to that sector one day, but right now this was a choice I needed to make for my family.

Due to my youngest son's age, an in-home nanny seemed to be the best option for his care. I searched and interviewed until I found the right person.  I spent a greater part of my wages on the nanny, but figured this would pay off in the longer term because I had secured a job, and soon I could access government subsidies for childcare once our son was old enough. My knowledge of child development meant that I had an awareness of what he would be able to manage in terms of non-parental care, so in time he moved on from the nanny in our home to being cared for in someone else's, and then, after more research, to a small, friendly daycare centre, and finally, to the kindergarten that his siblings had attended.

In the meantime, both my parents died, and my life was turned upside down. I began re-evaluating my entire life. As I have already written about, I went to therapy to help deal with anxiety and panic, but the therapist uncovered much more - I had experienced a loss of autonomy. I had lost myself. At the time this was uncovered, it was all I could do just to manage the immediate problem of my anxiety and panic. But it wasn't going to go away.

By that time I had spent eleven years in service to my family and community. My community work was for my own benefit as well, as it kept my mind engaged in things outside child rearing, but it was still child-centred. I was able to sit on a board of a non-profit organisation, but I was still on 24 hour mother duty as I breastfed a baby at the board table. I grew a social media site for my volunteer organisation around cooking dinner, vacuuming the floor and taking children to swimming lessons.

The day before I left my husband and family home in 2014, I also saw a therapist. I wanted to address two things. Questions about my sexuality, and my child rearing burnout.

I was tired. So tired. The therapist agreed I was burned out.

I probably should have stayed and worked through those feelings, but there were so many feelings, and they were so overwhelming, I ended up needing to take action. I needed to run.

People refer to the analogy of the airplane emergency procedure where you are told to put your oxygen mask on before you attend to anyone else.

I had spent years keeping everyone else's oxygen going, and although I tried to secure my own mask, now I was suffocating.

Even though I ran, I still saw and cared for my children every day. But I needed to hunker down and take care of myself, too. Weekends away weren't cutting it. They just meant I had to go home again and I didn't want to. Having more money thanks to an inheritance didn't help. What I needed was space.

A year on I have worked out what was suffocating me. I have learned how to put in place boundaries for children that ensure that they still feel cared for but I don't end up emotionally exhausted.

Back in 2001 my husband and I made the choice based in our shared values that I would stay at home to help look after our family. At university I have learned that what we were doing was market and non-market work. Because we believed in the value of a primary caregiver being a constant in a baby and young child's life, it mostly fell to me, as the stay at home parent, to do the other non-market work as well.

Since making those choices, it seems there has been a shift in society where I am expected to provide for my children equally. As a feminist, I think this is great. However, there are huge problems for women who have bought into the ideal of the 'bring home the bacon' husband while they stay at home with the babies. Many made those choices years ago, before society moved on, and now they are trapped and suffocating too.

I have no education because I gave it up ... twice. Firstly for a man. Secondly for my children. I tried very hard last year to finally have a third chance, but it was too financially and logistically difficult.

I have spent more than a decade putting my children first. I am desperately trying to balance putting my children first, but doing it without losing myself again. I have worked in my children's school for five years, and am still known by many not as 'Dania from the library,' but as 'Jacob's Mum' or 'Freya's Mum.' I can't provide for anyone beyond myself because I am not qualified enough for anything beyond minimum wage employment. I work in my children's school because it means that I can see two of them every day, and that I don't have to work late nights and weekends and have them in someone else's care when they are with me.

Now, nearly at the age of 40, I am worse off financially than I was in 2001 at the age of 25. This is the price that many parents, overwhelmingly women, pay for being the non-market workers in our society. For being the child carers, the cooks, the cleaners, the taxi service, the social arranger, the thrifty shopper, the medical assistant. Sometimes juggling low paid work outside the home. Sometimes trying to run a business in the home. Sometimes volunteering in early childhood services, schools, community groups so that they can spend time with other adults. They might make this choice willingly, but I'm not sure they always understand what they are giving up. I certainly didn't.

Its sad that we live in a world where we end up being punished for nurturing. But ultimately we do. And then when we claim ourselves back we are told we are selfish.

Never again.
Not for me. Not for my daughter.
Never again.

And I still don't own a house.