Thursday, December 22, 2011

What do you do with your time?

I never know what to say when people ask, “What do you do?”

Sometimes I say that I am a writer. I love writing for this blog, and I occasionally write for pay. But writing is so new to my life and such a side project that it doesn’t feel like an honest or complete answer.

The easy answer is that I stay home with my kids. But I dislike the label stay-at-home mom. My kids spend their morning at preschool, but how is it relevant to my identity that I don’t work while they are out of the house? Every mother is a mother, regardless of what else she does with her life. “Stay-at-home” seems to convey parenting and nothing else. Am I more committed to parenting than a woman who works for a living? More present, more attentive? I hardly think so.