All the advice about curing "mom burnout" isn't helping

I think it's gonna take a little more than "make time for self-care!" (barf)

Photo by Resume Genius on Unsplash

I’ve been a parent for almost 10 years, and have had to face the reality that either 1) I’m not cut out to be a working parent and there’s just something deficient about me or 2) being a working parent and not being burned out is possibly not an option. Or both.

I’m tired. Exhausted. Burned to an actual crisp. Every moment of my life is relentless responsibility. I don’t even remember what it feels like to experience “fun”.¹ So, let me turn to trusty Google and see what people say about how to fix this!

OK I’m supposed to:

• Ask friends and family for help

  • I have no friends and family lives too far away to help. Next!

• Hire a housecleaner / delegate

  • Had a housecleaner for a bit. We couldn’t afford it but tried to pay for it anyway. I would stay up all night the day before the cleaners came, because they didn’t pick things up off the floor, they only vacuumed/swept/mopped floors that were already bare. We started getting into debt because the housecleaners were so expensive and I felt like I was doing 80% of the cleaning anyway. I’ve been trying to get my husband to clean more for 15 years, and begging/crying/pleading has never worked. Nope.

• Lower your standards and not worry so much about keeping your house clean

  • A relatively tidy house is good for *all* of our mental health in my household. As I’ve mentioned previously, one of my parents was a hoarder and I have issues about it. I can only lower the bar so much before I start to get stressed out by the mess itself.

• Don’t compare yourself to other moms

  • …was I supposed to be doing this?! This is not the cause of my burnout. I am aware other moms struggle even if they don’t appear to be struggling on the outside. I only wish that moms generally didn’t have to struggle SO hard.

• Have boundaries

  • People always say this. I do have boundaries. But I can’t make a boundary between me and literally keeping my kids alive, fed, clothed, educated etc. Some things simply are not things I can say “no” to.

• Breathing exercises

  • I feel like I’m going to hyperventilate when I try to do mindful breathing or whatever. If I think about breathing, I suddenly *can’t* breathe. Like even typing this out right now makes me feel like I’m going to suffocate. Please don’t make me do this.

• Take time for self-care

  • What time?! Like literally - what time? The only time I could do this is when my kids are asleep, and when my kids are asleep, I’m asleep. I guess sleeping is self-care?

• Ask for help / therapy / medication

  • I’m on the highest dose of anti-depressants as you can possibly be on without having a seizure (my medication truly does help but doesn’t really fix that I have 10 billion things to do every day). I tried therapy and felt like I had to constantly re-assure the therapist that I was fine. I’m embarrassed of my problems, like intrusive thoughts - too embarrassed to share them with an actual person. And see above re: no friends or close-living family.

Absolutely no judgment if this stuff works for you, I would be really glad to hear experiences of this kind of advice has been helpful. But it just isn’t helping me.

My present sucks, but is there a possible future that doesn’t suck?

Recently my daughter has been talking about all of the dogs she’s going to have when she grows up (so far we’re up to at least 4 dogs) and it got me thinking about what I want for her in life. I do NOT want her (or her brother) to make the same mistakes I did, some of which include:

• Thinking that in order to have a career, you have to work endless hours and sacrifice all well-being for work.

• Thinking that my job/career is your identity, or that physical/hourly/service jobs are somehow less respectable. I honestly would so much rather she work for, say, a dog groomer (which she would LOVE) than have some kind of office-job based career like I have, which I thought would be fulfilling but absolutely is not, and has only served to grind me down until I have nothing left to give.

• Being embarrassed or apologetic that you have caregiving responsibilities and a life outside of work, so trying to hide them and never talk about the struggle with your coworkers.

I also would love her world - and the world of my son (2) - to be different when they are adults. Really, really different. Like…

• What if the US had a real safety net?

  • Universal Basic Income, single-payer healthcare, tons of publicly available / low-cost housing, fully funded social security/retirement and disability benefits?²

• What if you could use some of your social security/retirement when you are younger, to take a significant time off of work to raise kids (or do….whatever?).

  • I’m eligible to retire when I’m 65. What if I chose instead to retire at 70, and take 5 years off now, using my social security funds early? What if I could have done that when my first child was born, and I could just have been home with her until she was ready to go to kindergarten? What if my husband (who is a stay-at-home dad) could draw from his future social security and use that to help pay our expenses while raising our son to age 5? What if my childfree friends ALSO got 5 years to do whatever they want with that (travel the world? Care for an aging or ill loved one? Start a business?)

• What if everyone worked WAY fewer hours?

  • Like, max of 25 hrs/week is full-time (or something). You could work more and make more money, but you could also just work like 25 hours and that’s a full-time job. Your healthcare isn’t tied to your job (see bullet 1 above). Conveniently, that’s roughly how many hours you currently get when your kids are in school (~6 hours a day/ 5 days a week for 30 hours total). Of course, in order to make it fair for teachers so they aren’t working more than 25 hours a week, I would recommend that actual instruction time be limited to like, a max of 4 hours a day, with the rest being prep / grading time, and then the school hires more personnel to help supervise kids while they’re playing outside/doing sports/whatever, which they should be doing WAY more of. This, of course, would require funding schools WAY more and actually investing in education the way most developed nations do. And also slowing down the expectations on teachers and kids to cover so much, so fast, which is burning everyone out.³

What does any of this have to do with burnout?

I had a realization that the root of my burnout is that I’m not kind to myself. I blame myself for failing instead of looking objectively at the fact that I am living an impossible situation.

Would I blame my children if they were struggling and their life was like mine? Of course not! I would be like, listen, we’re not supposed to be living this way. We shouldn’t have to spend the majority of our waking hours working, when we’re 80% more productive than workers were 40 years ago. We should have a better social safety net so your healthcare isn’t tied to your job. We should respect the fact that raising kids and working full-time is impossibly hard on parents and if we collectively believe kids are a net positive for society, we need to invest in kids and parents.

By visualizing what I want my kids’ lives to look like, I’m better able to make changes in my own life that gets me and everyone I work with closer to a better future (even if it’s just baby steps). I’m a middle-manager. I have some leeway in letting staff in my department have flexible schedules and WFH. I support this to the fullest extent possible, whether people need to pick up kids from school, let their dog out, or just run an errand. You don’t have to have kids to need a lot more flexibility from work - everyone benefits. I wish I could change our concept of “full-time”, but we’re not there yet. Maybe someday we will be though.

I have no idea how to do any of the other major structural stuff to make caregiving / living easier and more realistic. But even recognizing that things *could* be radically different - that doing everything possible to move toward something radically different even in my own tiny way - helps me have more empathy for myself. It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve still got 10 billion things to do and no time to do it and no help, but at least I’m not wasting a ton of my (depleted, honestly) energy beating myself up about it.

1. I’m really trying to resist the compulsory “but I love my kids and would die for them!” which, while true, implies that in order to discuss the soul-crushing difficulty of modern parenting, you have to first make sure everyone knows you’re not a monster who hates their kids. As if the only 2 options are 1) you love every aspect of parenthood and have zero complaints or 2) you’re a monster. But there’s also the option that 3) you love your children and would die for them, but need to vent about how parenting in our world is so, so, so hard.

2. I realize in our current political climate in the US this kind of thing seems impossible, especially as we’re in the midst of destroying huge swaths of our federal government that maintains what little safety net we have. But you can’t blame a girl for dreaming.

3. I am not an expert in education so please correct me on any of this, I fully understand I am kind of talking out of my ass here.