How motherhood made me unemployable

Gayle Johnson - 21 Nov 15

I have two children. I am no longer employable.

For me though, it’s not about the commute, the dire lack of decent part-time or flexible jobs. It’s about what motherhood has done to me and my Big Thoughts On Life.

I spent my twenties wedded to my job. 10-hour days, writing presentations at midnight, getting promotions because they were there. I was just a small-medium sized cog in a biggish machine but I was part of it, achieving stuff. It was dandy.

And now, in my mid-thirties with two children, it’s all gone. And I’m more than fine about it.

I don’t want to get things all out of proportion, but being a mother’s totally re-focussed my world (I suppose that’s quite overblown). This whole process of being at the mercy of tiny people who make more demands of you than you’ve ever known – it’s turned me inside out and made me something new. It’s made me look at the world anew. Made me realise something big.

I don’t want to work for anyone else anymore.

I like people, I love working with people. I love getting things done. I like getting to drink hot coffee and use my brain differently. But the whole dancing to someone else’s tune, throwing your energy behind something you don’t believe in. Office politics. Nodding politely in pointless meetings.

Life’s too short for that. Life is for doing the stuff that’s important. I’m still a professional, and I’m realistic – I know that any work, just like life, involves doing stuff that you don’t like. But I want to ensure that my work is mostly… work. Not all the rubbish around the edges. And if it is rubbish, that it’s my rubbish.

Those years I spent in my twenties getting the promotions… God, I was so scared of putting a foot wrong. I treated work like school, viewed my boss as my teacher and couldn’t imagine doing something completely different.

Motherhood was a wake up call. Knowing that it was totally on me how I cared for my babies, and despite the manuals, there was no one right way. And that however frazzled and out of my depth I felt, there were hundreds of us all in the same boat. I got it. For maybe the first time in my life I made my own decisions rather than doing what I thought everyone else wanted. I realised it’s ok to take risks, have a go, fail, change your plan, have another go. How else do you learn? So the thought of being stuck doing work on someone else’s terms no longer makes sense.

There’s not enough time not to do work I love.

My daughters robbed me of my time and my sleep, bless ‘em. I long for unbroken nights… but those long hours of caring for my children has jolted me to realising just how important my time is. Scarcity rockets value. And I’m in the happy position of enjoying being around my kids (Mostly. Sometimes we do each other’s heads in). So if I’m going to leave them to do something else, hadn’t that thing better be bloody amazing? Something I really want to do, and that makes a difference to someone somewhere? That doesn’t come entirely wrapped up in someone else’s agenda?

What do I want my children to think about work?

I started to wonder… Do I want them to think work’s something to get though, to pay the bills, that life is lived at weekends? Or do I want them to think that it’s about doing something valuable, that other people want and need, something you love? I don’t want work to be just daily grind. I want work to be interesting, stimulating, stretching, fun. And yes, something you stick with during the bad or dull times too, because it’s important and the people you work with are important.

And so… I couldn’t find a job locally that would sing to these ideals and also let me work flexibly. There’s too much faff or politics or doing stuff that doesn’t get you anywhere.

So I’m unemployable right now. I’m raring to work, but I going to do something I love, something I can throw myself into. I’ve entered the heady, scary world of freelance writing. And for all that instability, and admin and other stuff that comes with being a one-woman band, I love it. I’m finally doing work that feels authentic and fits with what I want to do with my life.

Don’t get me wrong. I know these are tough times, and I know that many people need to take whatever work they can get. It’s fucking awful how much people are being squeezed. And I know that many people are happy in their jobs: they’ve got something that fits in with their family, values, lives. That’s great.

But. This motherhood-inspired unemployment might just be one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

Gayle Johnson

Freelance writer. Proud owner of red boots, wannabe chicken-keeper. Fiendish consumer of coffee. Newbie home educator, learning all the time.

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