Direkt zum Hauptbereich

MAMA NON LAVORA!*

*Mom does not work

I worked as a nanny for an Italian family in Munich. Papà was an engineer and had a very good job. Mama was an event promoter and self-employed, she had her own company and worked from home, organizing and promoting events in her town in Italy. Every morning she was pretty busy with conference calls, budgets, emails, and planning, but when the day of the events came, she had to be there in Italy, to conduct them personally.

They had a son, the little Pietro. He was not yet two years old and used to fly to Italy with Mama when she needed to be there for work – his grandma was always happy to have him around. But this one time it happened that Pietro had to stay in Munich. I came in the afternoon to take care of him until Papà arrived from work. Mama told him she had to go to work, Papà was coming soon and that I would be there to play with him meanwhile. 

When he noticed that Mama was really leaving, he started to cry, clung around her neck and shouted “Mama non lavora!”*. Mama got touched with his words but told him that yes, moms also work. With nice and sweet words she brought him a little bit calm and convinced him to watch his prettiest novel with me. I turned on the TV, held him tenderly in my arms and sat to watch “Heidi”, waiting for Papà to arrive. 

I was surprised with his statement: who told a two-year-old boy that mothers don’t work? He was a lucky boy to have both mother and father together around him, but in his perception, if Papà was working, Mama didn’t need to and should stay at home with him. 

One can justify he just expressed an instinct. But when we look at nature, we see many species where the mother is the only responsible to care for the puppies. Therefore it is not “natural” for mothers not to work.

For single mothers who are breadwinners, there is no choice: they must work. And if they do not have their family around to give them support, they have an even more complicated routine. In order to keep up with the responsibility of putting food on the table and raising the children, they often sacrifice their own self. Time is a very valuable asset, and any minute left shall be dedicated to the kids.  

So, if you are a single mother juggling work, kids and bills, be aware that you must take time for yourself, to renew your strength and get comfort to your soul, to feel that you are not alone on this journey. Don’t try to be a hero and get yourself any help whenever you feel the necessity. Your kids need you fit and centered.

As a single mother myself, I can affirm that you can do it because I did. But I don’t want you to do the way I did it – it was extremely tough. There shall always be another way to go through this life challenge that is to raise kids all alone. 

Come to Marina On Air, our Online Community of Supportive Single Working Mothers, and take profit of my personal experiences to enhance your own. Let’s exchange our stories and tell other mothers how we overcame difficult situations. There is no fixed solution because each life is very unique, but the interchange of several experiences can give other mothers hints of how to deal with problems under certain circumstances.

Together we can build up a very strong supportive community of single working mothers. Join us!

Website: www.marinaonair.com
Facebook: @marinaonair
Instagram: @marina.on.air

#singleworkingmoms
#singleprofessionalmother
#getsupport
#powerwomen
#strongwomen
#marinaonair
#singlemother
#supportivewomen

Kommentare

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

The worst week of my life

It was a Sunday in March 2001. As usual, she came into my room early, because she woke up according to her biological clock and wanted to play. I wanted to sleep longer and used to kick her out of my bedroom. So many times I did this, so many times she came back shortly afterward with my breakfast, arranged in her own way, on a tray. But that morning she did not return. And I did not even miss her, because I slept again. When I got up, I saw her prostrated on the sofa, burning with fever. There was a slight reddish swelling behind her ear, and I immediately took her to the hospital. They gave her medicine to lower the fever and said it seemed to be mumps, but the strange thing was that she was already immunized against it. How could it be? We went home and stayed quiet for the rest of the day. On Monday morning she was feeling better, then I took her to school and went to work. But at lunchtime when I picked her up at school, she was feverish again, the edema behind her ear ha

100% priority

In the text about if it is possible to be a perfect mother and at the same time an outstanding professional, I said I would be back to the topic. Not only because this was a very hard thing for me, leaving me guilty for not being “a good mama” for my daughter, but also because I see it is a topic that still concerns mothers all around the globe. Recently I was sitting at a table surrounded by wonderful engaged women and suddenly I heard some of them talking about single motherhood. And how hard and tough are the demands of society on single mothers. Even worse when single working mothers. Then I mentioned what I wrote here in my blog, which was a big dilemma for a long time in my life. I told these enlightened women that I no longer felt guilty because now I knew I did the best that I could at every moment of my life. I knew I might have failed in some moments as a mother, in other as a professional, but I was aware, I had done all I could. One of the women, also a single

What do all cultures have in common?

Each time we talk about culture here, it is necessary to remember what concept of culture we are talking about, which is culture as the identifying factor of a social group. According to the American anthropologist Kluckhohn, culture is a pattern of behavior (thinking, feeling and reacting of a human group) that is acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols within that group and represents its specific identity. It includes the concrete objects produced by the group and its heart is in traditional ideas and values. Based on this concept of culture, the Dutch culture researcher and psychologist Geert Hofstede* conducted a study there in the 1960-70s among IBM employees in 50 countries, in which he realized that all cultures have common traits, that he called “cultural dimensions”, and what determines the difference between cultures is the degree of importance that each cultural dimension has within them. The five cultural dimensions initially defined by Hofstede are: -