'I fear that becoming a mum turned me into a bad feminist. But not an unhappy one.'

There is sweet FA equal division of labour in my house. 

My husband brings home the bacon, while I do the lion’s share of cooking and cleaning, remember his family’s birthdays, and worry whether he is getting enough exercise. There is a line in my debut novel, One of Those Mothers, in which the protagonist, Bridget, makes some fairly sexist assumptions about her son’s teacher. 

“Oh Bridget,” she chides herself, “you bad feminist!” In truth, I fear I, too, have let down the sisterhood. That I, too, am a bad feminist. 

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Not an unhappy one, mind. For the most part, I am content enough in my work, but occasionally, say, when I'm scrubbing guts off my husband’s fishing shirt while he relaxes with a beer after a long day, I wonder what happened to the small, ardent activist who once raged in my chest.

Who, in her first year at primary school, when her peers opted to do their class projects on ponies and pterodactyls, chose as her subject Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strikes; who railed at the butcher with his crude jokes and flipped the bird to wolf-whistling construction workers.

Was there a particular event in among the many it takes to make up a life, that brought me here, to this place of gendered domesticity? Perhaps, with my predilection for make-up and clothes, it was the deep loneliness I felt amid all the earnestness of the Women’s Studies Department at university? Or maybe it was meeting my husband, a man with screeds of female friends, who presented as modern in his thinking, and yet, when it came to the question of whether or not I would take his name, proved most old-fashioned indeed?

Presumably, all played their part, but, casting my mind back, I suspect it was motherhood that derailed me the most. When it came time to return to work after my son was born, I was quite nauseous at the thought of leaving him. Leaking milk and tears, I did it, my earlier sense of ambition briefly returning when I took on a job editing a magazine. However, when I went on maternity leave with my daughter a few years later, I knew I would never return to a full-time, office-bound job.

I didn’t disappear completely into a world of coffee groups and GymbaROO – I wrote a popular weekly newspaper column for many years – but it would be fraudulent of me to claim I haven’t put mothering ahead of paid work over the past decade. Put mothering first and sometimes been judged for it. Not by men, but other women, for unfortunately there is still a divide between working and stay-at-home mothers.

When asked to provide my occupation I’m glad I have always had “writer” to fall back on. I don’t think I could ever put down “housewife”, even though there have been days/weeks/months/years when it would have been my most accurate job title. Why the shame? For what is feminism if it’s not having the autonomy to choose? 

If you think you’re a bad feminist for making the choices you have, then doesn’t it suggest some internalised misogyny? As a society, we don’t value so-called “women’s work” unless it’s paid and even then, when you consider the average pay of a teacher or nurse, who in good faith can say that these important roles are truly valued?

It pisses me off that women feel the need to defend the decision to be at home, as if somehow it isn't enough. Most women I know who aren’t in paid work lead incredibly full and busy lives. They're the ones schools rely on to come on camp and organise sports days. They're the ones picking up the slack for working parents when they're stuck at the office and their child needs collecting from dance or cricket. They're the ones organising a meal roster to help out the woman in their neighbourhood who's recovering from a mastectomy.

Of course, the flip side is true, too. Working mothers are all too often held up to the light and found wanting; the implication they are doing Jemima or Timothy a disservice, somehow damaging them irreparably by paying somebody to drive them to musical theatre or futsal.

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The main character in my novel, Bridget, works from home as a freelance online content producer. She is a case study of a woman who supposedly has everything, when in actual fact she suffers the worst of all worlds. Never able to fully switch off from any of her jobs, Bridget is expected to answer clients’ emails at the drop of a hat, be there on the cross country side-lines, cheering her own children and all the poor supporter-less children on, and, at the end of the day, be up for a session of hot sex with her husband if the mood takes him.

Growing up in the '80s I was told again and again that I could do anything, have everything. I won’t be filling my 14-year-old daughter’s ears with such tosh. I don’t believe it’s possible for anyone, male or female, to do anything or have everything. No, I will give her the same advice I wish someone had given me. That her sexual appetite is not necessarily any less vigorous than a man’s, and definitely as valid. That just because she is female does not mean she requires strings and ties, a promise to call, that she is entitled to seek pleasure for pleasure’s sake. That she should revel in her burgeoning body, doing what feels good and saying no to what doesn’t.

I will counsel her that the path she takes is hers to choose, but that inevitably, at some point along the way, she will need to compromise, sometimes putting her partner and any children she may have ahead of her own desires. That to do so doesn’t make her a bad feminist, or, for that matter, a bad mother. 

Just an honest one.

Thrice nominated for New Zealand's best columnist, Megan Nicol Reed spent seven long years mining her life for a column that originally ran in the Sunday Star Times and then the New Zealand Herald's Canvas magazine. Megan lives in Auckland with her husband, two teenage children and dog. One of Those Mothers (Allen & Unwin, $32.99) is her first novel, and is available now at all bookstores.

Feature image: Supplied.

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