Are you a Major or a Wonder Mother?

Fin O'Driscoll - 15 Sep 16

I have been a working mother and a stay at home mother. I hate both these terms as they imply you only work outside the home. Every mother I know works bloody hard, regardless of location. I prefer the terms ‘Major Mother’ and ‘Wonder Mother’. Allow me to explain…

Major Mothers work outside the home as well as inside it. Being a Major Mother takes excellent forward planning and the ability to manage every contingency. You have to hold a million things in your head and keep everything on track and running smoothly. You have to plan every day like a military campaign, making sure that there are enough supplies of food, drink and clean clothes to keep everyone going. You have to duck the emotional shrapnel when you’ve forgotten that it’s mufti day, or you didn’t bring the biscuit rations to get everyone through that really important meeting. You also require a large spy network; I have often relied on my son’s friends to keep me informed of what he was doing with his days as he is stunningly uncommunicative about it. It took a couple of sessions of water boarding (well, bath time) just to find out what his topic was for the term. At work you rely on stalwart advisers and dependable gophers to ensure the smooth running of every action. It is exhausting and the barrage is endless but when the campaign goes well you can lean back and chew on a massive cigar and say things like ‘I love the smell of copier ink in the morning.’ and try not to think about the fact that the kids were too angry/sad/excited to give you a proper goodbye in the morning and you might not get to see them before bedtime.

When you are a Wonder Mother, you spend your time in and around the home and you find that the little things get big. It’s like you’re living in Wonderland. There’s no logic to what happens, you will frequently meet characters who are prone to fits of incandescent rage, engage in conversations that make no sense whatsoever and everything is as repetitive as a jolly caucus race and about as productive. CBeebies theme songs will flap their way into your consciousness and roost like a Jub Jub bird. Nothing ever stays where you put it down. Your child becomes big enough to fill your whole mind and you can feel yourself shrinking smaller than a teardrop. It becomes easy to obsess over the minutiae of your child’s life; their relationships with those around them, their likes and dislikes, the exact colour of their belly button fluff. Your life is simply full of your kids and the craziness they create. It’s baffling and brilliant and often very very boring. It’s also very noisy.

It’s easy to set these two positions at opposition with each other, that we are two tribes determined to prove that the path you are on is the best one. In my experience this seems to be something that mainly happens in print, not in the playground. I have been both Major and Wonder and I think both sides have joys and pitfalls to offer equally. Most mums I know understand that kindness is the only way we can all get through it. I know Major Mums might sometimes be put off by not feeling part of the close relations developing at the school gates, I know Wonder Mums sometimes look longingly at the heels and skirts and brushed hair that whizz past them at drop off time but I also know that we all know motherhood is a bloody hard job regardless of which camp you are in. A smile and a nod in each direction and the labels melt away and we can get on with being who we are, multi faceted mothers, women, humans.

Fin O'Driscoll

Writes funny

View profile for posts, events and more info