The article explores the emotional strain faced by working mothers, highlighting the exhaustion and despair visible in their daily lives. The author reflects on the societal pressures that create an unrealistic image of motherhood and the conflicts that arise between personal aspirations and family responsibilities. Despite the choices available to women today, the realities of motherhood often lead to feelings of being torn in different directions. The author suggests that without historical support and acknowledgment of this struggle, many women feel they are left at the brink of collapse.
Sometimes, when I see a woman in the late afternoon pushing a buggy, a sniffling toddler in tow, I want to cross the street. Not out of judgment, but because I can't bear how exhausted she looks. The quiet despair etched into her face. It’s a life lived at the edge of collapse.
Is it really a choice if you abandon the idea of motherhood because you've seen how brutal the reality can be? Because you've internalised that having a child has meant, for generations of women, being torn in impossible directions?
Their inner conflict. The overload. The heartbreak of falling short of whatever illusions they had. The anger at their limits, their circumstances. It really is insanely hard to work and, at the same time, keep up an orderly life, with a stocked fridge, a shiny sink, a happy child.
We don't have a tradition of the housewife. Housewives were viewed with suspicion, looked down on with a kind of contempt like pitiful characters from a Grimm's fairy tale.
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