I’m maxed out

In Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink – Katrina Alcorn talks about mothers’ increasingly limited options when it comes to a work-life balance because of inadequate maternity leave, skyrocketing childcare costs and a culture that hasn’t adjusted to households having two working parents.

She tells her personal journey about having a nervous breakdown as she tried to cope with the demands of mothering three children and pursuing a career.

“My son was born and it all went to hell,” Alcorn, 41, recalled to Today about the baby’s arrival in 2009. “On the surface, I was doing everything that I was supposed to be doing and it looked like everything was fine. But inside, I was just falling apart. I was having a lot of anxiety and insomnia and there was all this stress. There was too much on my plate. I lost my appetite, I was getting depressed.”

I’ve often felt a little “maxed out” in the past year. It just doesn’t seem possible to work full-time, care for my kids and still have time to keep “life” afloat.

When I finish up work next year there’s a loooooong to-do list waiting for me: getting a pap smear and a mammogram, cleaning up a disaster-area attic, reviving neglected friendships, straightening out numerous bits of my life on paper like doing my taxes for the first time in two years  …

There are also the perceptions of my two children than I spend my whole life with one eye on an electronic device and only half an eye on them that I want to change.

It caught my eye when I saw Lauren Apfel at Brain, Child had written: “I’m not maxed out. There I said it. I have days, we all have days, where there aren’t enough hours and my nerves are frayed and balls drop left, right and center. But these are just days, they aren’t my life. Eight years ago I chose to ‘stay home’ with my kids, not because I think women should do this as a rule. I chose to stay home because I knew myself. I knew that I couldn’t be the mother I wanted to be and hold down a steady job at the same time. Call me unambitious, I never expected to ‘have it all’.”

I don’t want to “have it all”, at age 45 I’ve realised I just want to have happiness. But I get where she’s coming from.

Lauren also joins the numerous women who’ve taken a critical eye to Katrina Alcorn’s book: “The question writ large I kept asking myself, though, is what, that was out of her control, would have prevented Alcorn from reaching the point of emotional collapse?”

Lauren questions Katrina’s choices in “continuing to feed the older baby at 2 am; about taking on a book contract, in addition to a full-time job, while seven months pregnant with your second kid; about travelling to a conference with a three month old.”

Others such as Katie, who commented on a story about Maxed Out in the The New York Times, sums up many of Katrina’s detractors with her dubious line: “Having children, and deciding how many, is a personal decision and one has to make sure she can stick with it without crying, asking for a medal and sympathy …being a mother is a big job , maybe you should think about it before ?”

And I still bristle at comments such as the one by Constance: “When will our collective minds get around to acknowledging the fact that parents cannot raise young children in just weekends or spare time? Or that a demanding career takes more than just 40 hour a week, and you don’t step out of the office fresh and ready to be truly present for your kids? I am NOT advocating a return to 1950’s domestic slavery, but please parents, if you choose to have kids, RAISE THEM! Don’t contract out the most important job you have to the lowest bidder.” Oh eff off Constance! What about the people that have no financial choice in the matter?”

But I get where Lauren is coming from in her concern about women sometimes being their own worst enemies when it comes to lightening their load. I’m terribly guilty of this. Like on Saturday night when I came home from a busy day that concluded with taking the kids to Carols By Candlelight and announced at 8.30pm that I was going to make a peach cobbler to use up some fruit that was turning in the fridge. My husband had to resist the urge to shake me hard.

Fortunately I saw sense – and his dark expression – and backed away from the oven.

Lauren concludes: “Better working conditions for mothers of young children will make it easier, but they will not make it easy. Having your heart and mind pulled in competing directions is never easy. What Alcorn’s story highlights in this respect is the importance of acknowledging limitations, the structural ones that might change, just as much as the biological and emotional ones that won’t. “I didn’t know I had limits,” Alcorn says of the reason she fell off the cliff. The sooner mothers learn the potential danger in such a disavowal, the better.”

I’ve seen my limits. That’s why I haven’t regretted for a moment my decision to step away from the cliff.

I just need to get through a working Christmas first … good thing I started Christmas shopping five months ago. Isn’t that why they call it Christmas in July?

Yep, my own worst enemy.

Do you ever feel maxed out?