The best of both worlds
I grew up as a millenial in a relatively safe environment in one of the richest countries of Europe. While I did feel different at times from my peers during my childhood and teenager years, this was mostly related to the fact that my mother is from Singapore and therefore the biggest part of my family lives there. We did travel there regularly, but I didn’t get to see my family as much as I would’ve liked to and that did make me feel different - yet it’s also been a blessing to be exposed to another culture and to be able to call another place my home.
One thing I have never really felt though was inequality because I was a woman. I know that gender equality was a topic throughout my school years, but I also realised that for example in the law studies I started, in my opinion a field that may have been more male-dominated, there were more female students in the auditorium at university. Growing up, I have never had the feeling that I was treated differently because I was a woman or that I had less opportunities. I remember teachers and lecturers explaining that girls had the same opportunities as boys and I truly believed that - maybe also because I grew up in a safe environment where I was lucky not to encounter any discrimination based on race.
I was a little girl who loved playing with Barbie dolls and Polly Pocket, I lived in my own little pretend world and spent a lot of time listening to stories or writing them. I also grew up with two working parents, and though there was a short period were my childcare situation was not ideal, once we found the right solution for our family, I never had the feeling I suffered from that or that my parents didn’t spend enough time with me.
My female role model at home, my mom, was working full-time, moving forward in her career and being respected in her job by her colleagues and peers. Especially as a teenager, I would visit my mom’s office at least once a weekon the way back home after school, so I was familiar with her work environment. To me, it was always clear that I would get a job and work someday - and it was only in my late twenties that I actually felt the desire to have a family. I never excluded it throughout my life, but I was raised to put my needs first and focus on my career.
However, everything changed the moment children became a topic. I had already been working part-time at that point and was contributing less to our family budget than my husband, a fact that I was fine with because he did have a slightly higher salary, even when we were both working full-time. When our first son was born, I planned to take off 2 additional months of unpaid leave on top of the 16 weeks of maternity leave my employer gave me and then reduce my work load to 60%, while my husband would reduce to 90% and have one day a week off work. We did agree quite early that we wanted to share the childcare responsibilities, but that for various reasons, he would work more while I’d take a part-time position.
Things turned out differently and I ended up staying at home for nearly a year with our son. In this time, I was his main carer as I was breastfeeding him and home full-time, while my husband continued his job and his career. I was lucky that our son was a good sleeper and that he easily weaned of the breast at around 15 months. Once the pandemic hit, I had started a new job and my husband and I both tried our best to make the situation work, even though it wasn’t easy to stay at home with a 1-year-old.
Putting my own needs first
And then I got pregnant again and our second son was born. I’d say this was a big turning point, because even though I knew how to look after a child now, having to fulfill the needs of two tiny people felt so overwhelming that I for the first time really had to make sure I put my needs first in order to look after myself and not fall into a burnout. And this is where I started to see the inequalities in our society but also within our relationship.
My husband picked up a lot of night shifts so that I could rest, but a lot of the housework still stayed with me. I can’t say if this is a gender issue in our situation or just that we have different expectations. For me, a clean kitchen and living room table is important because it does support my mental health, while he cares less about these things. It’s taking us two years to find a balance - and it’s still a work in progress.
For the first time in my life, I felt unseen, as if I didn’t really matter. Here in Switzerland, I often get the feeling that as mothers, we are expected to have children (because otherwise society and our pension system won’t function), but we should do this in a way that our children are quiet, out of the way, not bothering anyone while they are playing or screaming (which - let’s face it - children often do). There are contained areas where this is acceptable, but everywhere else, children should be invisible, and thus mothers also become invisible. At the same time, everyone seems to have an opinion on pregnancy and parenting and there is a lot of unwanted advice or judging comments (you are working 60%? wow that’s a lot! - you are working ONLY 60%?).
As a mother in the workplace, life is still relatively challenging. I remember getting a job interview for an internal position, then being told that they’d require me to work full-time (even though the position was advertised as 80%-100%), then being called for an interview for a job-sharing, but it was clear from the first moment that the boss was not convinced about this idea. Sure enough, I got a rejection the next day. I hear of moms who have to go back to work after 14 weeks of maternity leave because they cannot afford to stay home longer with their children, of mothers who are not allowed to reduce their work hours and of mothers who are judged because they leave work at 4pm to pick their children. Being a mom has thought me so many valuable lessons that I could apply to a workplace, I’ve become stronger and more resilient and I am more focused in the limited time in the office that I have because I know that I have to pick up my child from nursery. Yet all that people see are that mothers leave work early and that they often need to stay at home with a sick child.
Family matters here in Switzerland are considered private matters within the family. This also includes any childcare options in a school system that offers short half days of school and expensive childcare at best. Though the low-income family get support for childcare, it’s the middle class families that seem to take the financial toll. We both studied and have decent salaries and we live comfortably, yet we pay around 20% of my husband’s salary each month for childcare - and our children only go to nursery 2 days a week! We still live in a system that is based on the idea that grand-parents look after their grand-children, because otherwise it either doesn’t add up financially or parents end up in a burnout because they are rushing around between work and childcare.
Becoming a mother has shown me the reality that we still live all the inequalities that I was told didn’t exist anymore when I was a child. There is a certain equality in our 20s, but as soon as women become mothers, things still change and they are still the ones taking up more mental load, more household chores, more childcare, all the while having less responsibilities at work, less pension funds and no real place in society. It’s been a wake-up call for me and certainly one that I hadn’t been prepared for.
I feel lucky because my family lives in a comfortable financial situation, which allows us to get the support we need in order to be able to nurture our relationship as a couple (essential for the family to stay together), pursue our work dreams and look after ourselves (essential for us to get through our day to day life). However I am aware that many families do not live in these comfortable situations - and I feel that everyone’s mental health matters. Everybody should be able to get the support they need so they can fulfill their basic needs and pursue a their dreams. We are not only parents, but also individuals with needs and desires, and these need to also be acknowledged during parenthood.
We still have work to do in order to fight for the rights of mothers but also fathers and families in general. But I also choose to be hopeful: I’m lucky to have grown up knowing that I had all the possibilities in the world, no matter what my gender was. So I’m hopeful that our children can grow up knowing that families get the support they need from society and that life will be less challenging for them than it is for us right now.