Mom's post about doing 'nothing' all day is trying to change how motherhood is viewed
Raising a child is a heavy task, it requires, dedication, care, and patience. Many parents and caregivers leave everything aside to take care of their children. Studies even show that stay-at-home parents experience poorer physical and mental health.
Even then, the struggles of being a stay-at-home mom are not often talked about. Lo Mansfield, who is also a stay-at-home decided to change this and discuss her experiences, reported Good Morning America.
She is a mom of three and a former labor and delivery nurse who currently lives with her family in the Netherlands, she is also an online educator but also a caregiver for her two daughters and son alongside her husband. She often has jam-packed days as she takes care of her children but sometimes even she needs a gentle reminder that her work as a stay-at-home mom is as valuable as anyone's job.
"When my husband asked me what I did today, I told him 'Oh, nothing,'" Mansfield recalled in a December 2022, Instagram post. She added, "What a load of c**p. I treated his body as the tiniest little gift, cleaning it and tending it and encouraging it towards growth and wholeness. I took my oldest to preschool, taught my middle how to hold her scissors, al dente’d the macaroni and cheese pasta for the 100th time."
"This idea of the work of motherhood, and how we kind of quantify and qualify, it has actually been something I've personally struggled with for a long time, because I am an achiever and a doer by nature," Mansfield told Good Morning America. "And I know that it's a struggle for many others, as well," she added.
Writing about her personal experiences has helped her broaden the conversation about societal perspectives on how child care and the work behind child rearing is viewed. "When did we start qualifying the loving, the caring, the tending to human life as nothing?" Mansfield asked, in part, in her post.
She also said, "Putting that out there just felt like almost my own desire to remind myself, like, hey, this matters. And the more we say it and the more we keep reminding others that this is valuable and it's meaningful, even if it's unglamorous or simple, the sooner we're going to get to the place where it's easy for all of us to believe it."
The work of child care is perceived differently by society as opposed to other kinds of work. "I think that the reason some of this gets a little messy sometimes is because there's love mixed in and so, we can't quantify and we can't put a monetary value on love, and we shouldn't be trying to," the 36-year-old said.
Mansfield's message to fellow parents is simple, "You are the right parent for your child," she said. "You might be a little bit broken, you might be a little bit grief-stricken. ... You might have done a really s--- job that day, you might have genuinely done nothing except keep your kids alive but that child is intended for you. You are intended for them. That is why they are yours."