By Emilie Ng
YEARS ago I confessed to a male friend that I was going to be a stay at home mum.
In my mind, that man – a Catholic – was going to applaud me in a way that would lead to wedding bells.
Instead, he laughed.
“You’d be bored out of your brain,” he explained.
What he was implying was that being an extroverted sanguine who cared too much about what people thought, I would become restless and resentful if I led an insular life.
Because that’s what a stay at home mum was in my naive fairy-tale plan, and that’s what I expected me, as a woman, should be doing.
I would just sit on the couch and watch TV, without as much as a child in the room.
The naivety is a little embarrassing.
Honestly, I really hadn’t put a lot of thought into the realities of the world, of being an adult, despite having lived away from home since I was 19, and for five years within a Catholic covenant community surrounded by numerous large families who paid mortgages and wrestled with work-life balance.
I did a lot of growing up when I met my husband.
Where I had wanted to sit back and let things happen to me, he had been working six days a week for nearly a decade to be able to afford his future family.
And he expressed that it was unsustainable for him to take on that goal on by himself.
It suddenly felt selfish to think that his hard work should be paying for my sedentary lifestyle.
By the time we were engaged, we had discussed everything we wanted for our marriage.
One of those was letting go of my vision to do nothing with my life and, instead, embrace my journalism career.
Part of this decision meant returning to work just before our child turned one, so that I could share in the necessary burden of providing for our family.
Juggling work and family life is not easy – some days I wish I were working full-time because I somehow feel less tired at my desk than sitting on the floor playing Lego.
Other times I just want to have the internal willpower to not pick up my phone to check emails every five minutes.
The Church’s teachings on the dignity of work have really resonated with me in the past two years, particularly Pope John Paul’s words in Laborem Exercens, where he says that work is good for man.
Personally, a schedule that involves three working days gives me a greater sense of purpose, and allows me to show my daughter that both a mother and father should take responsibility for caring for their family, without neglecting our mother-daughter relationship.
As a working mum whose employer is the Catholic Church, I have dreams of sending my daughter to a crèche in the building where I work, rather than one that is a 40 minute drive away.
I could run over for a sneaky cuddle or have a messy lunch if the time allows.
This sort of arrangement is offered at large, secular corporations, so perhaps the employer of one in one hundred Australians could consider offering it for its employed mothers.
Obviously, wages will always be a discussion point for any family in today’s financially unstable world, but I believe the Catholic Church should take this issue even more seriously since the cost of living is determining whether people have more children.
For instance, the Church could offset a portion of fees for Catholic education to families who work for the Church.
Later this month, the Australian Catholic bishops are inviting women across the country to celebrate their contribution and vision for the mission of the Church in this country.
The virtual national consultation, which will be hosted on Zoom on March 27, will give women the chance to meet with Archbishop Christopher Prowse, chair of the Bishops Commission for Evangelisation, Laity and Ministry, and the Bishops Delegate for Women, Bishop Michael Morrisey.
I hope to be there to share my experience as a mum who works for the Catholic Church, and how our sacrifices could be more creatively acknowledged by the Church as an employer.
I’m sure there are other things I’ll bring to the table, but I won’t spoil it before the consultation.
