In which a woman realises to her shock that mothers are useful employees, too.
…I secretly rolled my eyes at a mother who couldn’t make it to last minute drinks with me and my team. I questioned her “commitment” even though she arrived two hours earlier to work than me and my hungover colleagues the next day.
It seems like a fairly thinly disguised promo for her own company, but the attitude of her younger self is indeed very widespread. I’m regarded as a non-essential member of staff here in UCD, but the attitude exists all round for all staff members in the university who don’t put that role as a priority.
I’m not a fan of her earlier behaviour, mainly because it is repugnant. It insists that one should live to work, and that this is the moral centre of one’s life. To live otherwise is morally vacant and wrong; why else would she herself enjoy such disdain of those who make other choices? Her own story, however, at least suggests that the attitude is one that can be changed, even if it takes a life changing event to do it.
Katherine Zaleski
