Welcome to Mothership: Parenting stories you actually want to read, whether you're thinking about or passing on kids, from egg-freezing to taking home baby and beyond. Because motherhood is a big if — not when — and it's time we talked about it that way.
While most of us probably know that parenting is hard work, there are still prevailing stereotypes about stay-at-home moms, the most prominent of which is the idea that they don't do any actual work. Anna Strode, who runs the Bubs2Bikinis Instagram page, recently received a comment on one of her posts shaming her for "stay[ing] at home all day" — and she wasn't having it.
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Strode posted a photo to her Instagram page of herself with her children, and explained why the comment upset her.
"Last week someone made a comment on my page and you know what, it upset me," she wrote. "It cut me pretty deep and while I do my best to remain positive - this hurt. It basically said 'I wish I got to stay at home all day and exercise with my child, instead I have to go to work and do WORK...'"
"You think I don't WORK?!" she wrote. "You think I sit at home all day and twiddle my thumbs? You think 2 x 22 month old toddlers just let me kick my feet up all day after I've done my morning workout?"
Stay-at-home moms, she wrote, don't have it any easier.
"You think I'm beaming with energy as I grow a new baby and frantically do my best to keep up with twin boys that run rings around me?!" she wrote.
Strode, who regularly posts photos of videos of herself working out (featuring cameos from her twin toddlers), said that her life isn't always the way it looks on Instagram.
"Just to break it down... I exercise for 20-30 minutes a day," she wrote. "Sometimes stopping 20 times throughout to fetch toys, bring food, stop hair pulling, break up fights over toys and some days, stopping 2 minutes in because it just ain't happening that day!"
"I certainly DON'T spend all day exercising," she continued. "My days are spent changing shitty nappies, dealing with tantrums, playing cars and trucks, making food that gets thrown on the floor before it's even tasted, walking the streets trying to get tired, grumpy children to nap, attempting to teach two little humans to SHARE instead of bite, pull hair, scratch or push each other, pushing swings, climbing up and down bloody forts that shouldn't even be in kids playgrounds because they are so damn unsafe, singing the alphabet, going for adventures to keep the bubs happy, vacuuming 3 times a day because of all that food that I worked so hard to cook wasn't even considered eating, oh and did I mention the constant battle of playing referee ALL day between two little cheeky monkeys that guess what DON'T 'just play happily and entertain each other all day!'"
The point being, stay-at-home motherhood isn't as easy as many of us assume. For that matter, none of us should make any assumptions about what moms go through, whether they're stay-at-home moms or working moms. Regardless of someone's career path or job, motherhood isn't a walk in the park, and we could all do better to be less judgmental and more supportive.