“Yes, I know I have never run a business but let me tell you, Mr Goldschmidt, I have run a household of seven.
“Yes I know it is an unpaid and unappreciated position, but I defy you to do what I did for the past 40-odd years. I organised the schedules of five well-rounded children. I ran car pools and bake sales and bluebird groups. I negotiated, mandated and coddled all at the same time, not to mention what I had to do for my husband to keep him happy and productive and I did all of this without ever taking a sick day.
“The problem is that no one values the experience of a stay at home parent which is truly a shame because basically running a business enterprise, as you put it, would be a day at the beach to me.”
Norah Walker, Brothers and Sisters
When I first noted down this speech, I had envisaged some worthy treatise on the way stay at home mothers are undervalued.
I had no idea how very relevant it was about to become.
I have paid the deposit to symbolise my commitment to renting my new home for the next six months.
I returned from the estate agents with a folder of forms and now I have to complete the paperwork that verifies my credit worthiness, my character and my reliability as a tenant.
In trying to supply supporting documentation, it brings home to me my lack of value in the eyes of the world. For over two decades, I have existed only as someone’s wife and someone’s mother.
Even though, for all that time, I was doing everything for everyone else and taking on the multiple roles of financial manager, tax advisor, accountant, project manager, estate manager, event organiser, arbitrator, judge, detective, product buyer, retail operative, computer technician, researcher, doctor, nurse, chauffeuse, comedian, entertainer, domestic engineer, butler, sommelier, gardener, valet, nanny, maid in both the nursery and scullery, housekeeper, waitress, cook and chief bottle washer, all this counts for nothing.
Only now will I actually become officially responsible for myself.
And there seem to be all sorts of bureaucratic question marks over whether I have the ability or the finances to manage that without a significant male in my life.
Recent Bites