It Takes A Village (and I Pay Mine)


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5 minute read

It takes a village they say. And they, whoever they are, would be right, it does. It’s very hard to get the work, children, home, life balance right, without a little bit of help. 

I’m writing this piece, this week, because I’ve struggled. I’m between childminders and with work piling up and a three-year-old and one-year-old in the house, I’m half-assing everything. It turns out that if you remove even one cog in my wheel, my wheel falls off. Quite dramatically. 

My village is made up of people that I pay. There is our beloved and very missed this week childminder, the place I send the ironing to be done, the man who delivers the supermarket shopping and a cleaner (a recent much-loved addition). All of this to enable my husband and me to work. He doesn’t bat an eyelid at paying people to help us, while I, on the other hand, have been consumed by guilt at what I see are my failings as a wife, mother, and woman. What a load of bullshit right? I’m not sure how my brain made the leap to failure when I decided that life was too short for ironing all day on a Sunday but there you go, it did and here I am. 

Sometimes I look at all the people who help me get through my week and I wonder if I would be better off going back to basics. If I need all these people to help my life function maybe I should just simplify my life. Should I be a stay-at-home parent and eliminate the need for childcare? Should I suck up my hatred of Saturday’s spent cleaning the house and just get on with it like so many other people? Should I iron? That one’s a joke. Life is far, far too short to iron. When I was young, free, and single, I lived alone in a flat just off Parnell Street in Dublin City. Once every few weeks, I would drop sheets, duvet covers, and pillowcases into the launderette at the end of my road. “Ironed too?” was always the incredulous reply when I dropped my heavy load on the counter. I could hear them laughing and calling me something as I left but I never quite grasped what it was. Until one day, I pushed open the door, the bell ringing above it and they looked up. “Here she comes, the Queen of fucking Sheba with her ironing,” the woman behind the counter shouted. I blushed, slightly mortified that they were laughing at me, but I stopped and realised I didn’t care that they thought I was ridiculous for paying them to iron my fitted sheets. “Washed and ironed,” I said with confidence, “and you should bow to royalty.” They howled laughing and we became firm friends. I used to drop them in a card and a bottle at Christmas, signed from Queenie. 

If you Google ‘woman feels guilty for hiring a cleaner’ you’ll be presented with pages and pages of articles on the subject. Women’s magazines, psychologists and the Daily Mail have all spent a lot of time asking that very question. 

The overwhelming answer is that you shouldn’t. If you need help you should ask for it, particularly if you’re willing to pay someone to do it. Everyone has their strengths and most people need a job. You should play to yours and not make yourself miserable in the process. 

I work hard all week. My childcare isn’t full time and so I often log back on after bedtime is done to finish work. This is being written at 10pm after a long day of more work and looking after my girls. The last thing I want to do is scrub showers and hoover the stairs on a Saturday if I don’t have to. 

The key to this is of course my privilege. I’m lucky that I don’t have to, that I have the means to pay for help. But equally, all of the people in my paid for village are women who also want and need to work and I’m supporting them and their businesses. My cleaner, for example, started out as a childminder and saw a gap in the market and started cleaning. She has so many houses that she has other women who work for her, branded vans and corporate as well as domestic clients. She’s phenomenal. 

At the end of the day, though, this comes down to the fact that I love what I do and would be lost without my work. It’s interesting, creative, challenging and is the only time I get to myself in the week. I feel confident, successful and fulfilled by what I do and I know that working keeps me sane. 

I’m playing to my strengths and refuse to feel guilty for the help that I draught in. There is so much in a woman’s life to make her feel guilty already. Whether you work outside the home, or don’t is just the tip of the iceberg and I’m certainly not going to add cleaning to that.

Jennifer Stevens, August 2021

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