Parenting is a Twenty-Four Hour a Day Job
Posted: Saturday, November 21, 2009
by Gabriella Gometra
Many people think of parenting as a job. If it is a job, then it is a job unlike any other. Mo
st jobs require your presence from eight o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon. Parenting as a job does not stop even if you get the kids to bed by eight o'clock.
Even if they are sound sleepers, and not many children are, you cannot leave the house without a babysitter. Many a parent has learned from the frequent times a child wakes up that they are on-call all through the night. This sometimes means changing children's sheets and pajamas, giving medicine and general comfort at any hour of the night. Fortunately most children begin as infants that wake up two or three times a night for feedings. By the time children have gotten around to the midnight awakenings only occasionally or when sick, parents feel grateful to have gotten what little sleep they feel they have.
You may be an accountant, a computer programmer or a construction worker by day but as a parent you are expected to take on so many more roles. You must feed your children. Since feeding extra mouths does not usually come cheap that usually requires cooking to do it economically. You will be your children's first teacher. You are the one to introduce your child to their colors, their shapes and their alphabet first. You must love, or at least be able to tolerate, cleaning up spills and crumbs, doing mountains of laundry and washing hands, faces and bottoms all day.
As the children get older you must assume roles of chauffeur and team booster for all the sports your children may become part of. You must become chief tutor when the homework is a bit hard. If your child develops a health problem you may feel like a nurse or medical assistant as you record observations of symptoms and administer medicines and treatments under the doctor's orders.
One of the biggest differences between a day job and parenting is you can quit the day job. At least you can switch day jobs. Once you become a parent, you are a parent for life. The demands on your time are greatest when your child is young. The tasks of the job evolve immensely as your child progresses through the school years and into the teenager years. Even when your children are fully grown and have left the house, you still feel deeply your role of being a parent. You love them and you hurt when they hurt. You are busting in pride for them in all their accomplishments. You ache for them if they have serious problems in their adult lives.
The good news is that parenting is a job with bonuses that you cannot acquire in any other way. In return for the years of love and care, they will love and care for you in return. Sure your children will frustrate you and cause you to cry tears of sorrow, but you will also have many days of shedding tears of joy and pride. Your family will be a part of you forever.
Author Bio:
Gabriella Gometra, stay-at-home mother and writer, publishes on various topics, such as the personalized diaper bag and the Kalencom diaper bags.
This Article has been viewed 128 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Some people, after reading all the onerous and thankless tedium of tasks that are unpaid and the many exhausting roles of parenting mentioned in this article, might be led to believe that children are a sexually transmitted disease!But having kids helps us to appreciate what sacrifices our own parents made and helps us to relive and reexperience all the many years of childhood that we have forgotten.Thank you for being a sweet and complete mom.Ha, ha; I've heard that one before about the STD. But seriously, anyone considering parenthood needs to know it's not like playing house with dollies. You can't put your children on a shelf when they get unpleasant or when you get tired.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.