Alanah Eriksen: Six months of working mum guilt

Herald on Sunday editor Alanah Eriksen and her son, Mateo. Photo / Michael Craig

OPINION

At 10pm on a Saturday, I was sending the front page of the Herald on Sunday to the printers.

By 12am I was two wines deep at a friend's farewell party on a very rare night out.

By 10am on Sunday I was lying on the couch watching Love Island, gorging on butter chicken, after the toddler's shrieking through the floorboards got too loud to ignore from my slumber.

My saint of a husband was wrangling him as the guilt set in and I perused the different version of "me".

The employee in a rush to get out the door.

Herald on Sunday editor Alanah Eriksen wrestling with son Mateo and mum guilt. Photo / Michael Craig

The friend arriving hours late to the party and trying to play catch-up.

The mother not home to put her child to bed.

It's six months since my maternity leave finished and I joined a group of people who are permanently tired and permanently guilty - working parents.

Getting the balance right in the game of life as a working parent is like trying to tear yourself away from Love Island (impossible). Like most families, mine can't afford for either of us not to work full-time, while trying to pay a mortgage and put food on the table.

But it's not just about the money. I want to work, and I want to do well at work.

I heard a good analogy recently that each of us is made up of 100 per cent and we can give only a percentage of ourselves to all the different aspects of our life.

But what's a fair weight? Thirty-three per cent respectively to work, play and family? That doesn't leave much of the pie for your relationship, chore time or me-time. (Should the yoga be done at 4am so there's time to shower before the toddler gets up? Or at 8pm once he's in bed, and I just forgo dinner?).

Or does the kid get 50 per cent until he's a certain age and that slowly diminishes as he gets more self-sufficient? Does my husband work to the same ratio? How do we calculate whose job is more demanding?

I never see our son in the mornings as the commute to work is pretty long. I start early to beat traffic and so I can finish early enough to beat the traffic and pick him up from daycare.

But I've not left on time once since I came back from maternity leave.

All working parents know the struggle. Photo / Michael Craig

My son's often the last kid at daycare. One time when I arrived the teacher was already mopping the floor, Mateo holding his arms up for her to give him a cuddle as she poured more Janola on the floor.

Another time he was bashing away on a laptop (a broken one a parent had brought in), seriously deep in thought. The teacher said it was his favourite "toy". Coincidence, or a byproduct of his parents being on their computers at night, squeezing in a few more work emails as he pulls at our shirts pleading for attention?

Also, his first word was "bye". Coincidence, or a byproduct of parents constantly frantic to get out the door each day?

In the last six months, our son's had gastro twice, conjunctivitis, hand, foot and mouth disease, bronchitis, Covid-19 and many colds and cases of flu. Not to mention the sleepless nights from teething, night terrors or the daytime naps being mucked up.

It's not really possible for my husband to work from home in his job and he's already eaten into sick leave and annual leave to look after our son, and our parents don't live in Auckland, so the nurse role has mainly fallen to me in among making sure our readers are getting a great product each week (and overseeing its major redesign and the launch of its new lifestyle magazine).

There have been some crazy contortions to get through the workload around him (and all the snot). Luckily, I have a flexible employer who understands what working families face. My colleagues have all met Mateo on Zoom, just as I've met their children, spouses, cats and courier drivers.

There's not suddenly going to be extra hours in the day and we are never going to be able to split ourselves in two but at least the pandemic has allowed many of us to distort our lives, a luxury my working mum certainly didn't have with three children in the 1990s, and one for which some occupations still don't allow.

And, working for a Sunday paper, I get to enjoy Mondays off with my little guy.

I can only hope that one day, as he's accepting an award for brain surgery, Premiere League Football and/or rocket science he'll thank us for our work ethic and it will all be worth it.

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