In case you missed it: in September, a 29-year old woman posted a brief TikTok video describing her weekend. “Typical” for Julia Mazur apparently involves sleeping in after taking in a concert the night before, then trying out a new recipe, and then catching up on the "Real Housewives" series.
Before I discuss the hellfire that rained down on this young woman for this very innocuous snippet, I need to add that Mazur was quite clear that she first, was able to enjoy this not-very-decadent day because she didn’t have a husband or kids yet and second, wanted to document this luxurious bout of sloth and Caligula-level hedonism so she could remember that it’s still possible to be happy whenever societal pressure tells her she’s not where she should be in life.
Because it’s been proven that posting a picture of a stick on the internet will get you death threats, pundits had predictably viral words about all this, up to, and including, actual death threats. One reposted the video on the platform formerly known as Twitter with the comment, “she’s (Mazur) too stupid to realize how depressing this is,” with "this" being her satisfaction with this stage of her carefree, responsibility-lite, life.
Depressing? To many women with small-to-medium-sized children, married or not, a day like that (Sleeping until almost noon? Cooking to try out a recipe, rather than to bribe toddlers to quit crying? Watching non-cartoon TV for hours, presumably with no interruption?) sounds like straight up porn.
Not that it matters, and not that it’s anyone’s business but hers, Mazur isn’t even refusing to get into the wedding and child-producing game, either. She’s just trying to remember that her life is still good, even if she hasn’t married and procreated yet, the way right-thinking pundits think she should. I guess they won’t be happy until every unmarried woman is crying every minute of every day until they find "The One" and settle down and get married.
Of course, desperately weeping non-stop is not likely to help an unmarried woman attract and retain "The One," but that’s a paradox pundits are apparently happy to live with. Am I learning the lesson here that it’s okay to be unmarried and childless if you’re unhappy about it, or at least don’t advertise that you’re finding the situation survivable?
The truth is, and I say this as a married mother of four who held a paying job for 99% of her children’s formative years: it’s exhausting. I haven’t been a parent to a teenager for seven years now and I’m still trying to catch up on my sleep. And during that 1% when I wasn’t working a job? Still exhausting. And I have been one of the lucky ones; Dad, Interrupted participated fully in child-rearing, with none of this "I’m helping" nonsense that tells us exactly what the expectations are about who is responsible for family life in America.
What? You say that women are not generally held responsible for hearth, home and parenting in our society, even if they’re also the breadwinner in their family? Please find where the phrase "working dad" is a part of our national vocabulary and get back to me.
Now, if you’re warming up your Pundit Machine to tell me that all this could be avoided if women would just not hold paying jobs, please note that having children is exhausting even without the job. I’m the youngest of five children, and my stay-at-home mother was too pooped to pop for about 30 years. Years ago, when I had only two toddlers, I called her to ask how she stayed sane with five of us under the age of 8. She hung up, laughing. I’m not sure she ever stopped.
The life of the 21st century woman with children, especially the woman with a paying job, is not necessarily an attractive prospect. If my experience is any indication, we’ve all spent years feeling guilty about not hovering over the kids; hovering over them when work was calling; wanting to spend time with them but not wanting to spend every waking moment with them; not looking forward to weekend-long sport tournaments because there was still a mountain of laundry and groceries and cleaning that would still need doing when the soccer balls were put away before work on Monday morning; randomly combining our favorite three-word phrases: “I love you” and “Get it yourself;” and, guilt piled upon guilt: failing at making our struggle to keep our checkbooks and homes and families above water look easy.
And while I love my children to the moon and back, and don’t regret one minute I spent trying not to guilt myself into oblivion, the last word I would use for anyone who had chosen to delay or even refuse to board this rewarding but frequently exhausting and endless roller coaster is "stupid."
No, Julia Mazur: before you make the decision to hop on this particular ride you’re right to want to sleep on it.
Elizabeth Evans is a local mother, wife, daughter, sister, former stay-at-home mom, former work-outside-the-home mom, former work-at-home mom and a human resources consultant.
