Problems, paradoxes and contradictions
Today is Wednesday and I’m sitting at my computer working on my overview of the field of maternal studies. I’m on a sabbatical and I have been reading and writing in silence for the best part of the day. Yet there is no school on Wednesday. In order to be able to go on focusing on my presentation, I took my children to the centre de loisirs, which is a community-run daycare centre for school-age children, like I do every Wednesday. They’re probably having a lot of fun playing ball with the other children, drawing, building Lego constructions. I’m certainly enjoying my time alone working without being interrupted. Yet I can’t help feeling racked with guilt. “Other mothers are keeping their children at home on Wednesdays”, I keep thinking, all the while reading book after book on the contradictions of motherhood. I don’t think my children’s father feels remotely the same.