Do I really want to be a working Mom?

Sometimes I can't help but ask myself if I can really do all this? Do I even want to be a working Mom? (Trust me, I know all Mom's "work", what I mean is "have a job where I have to be somewhere at a certain time and report to someone else who decides what I have to do and when I have to do it." But that just takes too long to say, so I go with "working".) Do I even have what it takes to be a working Mom? Let alone a working-from-home Mom? (Sometimes the lines and expectations get blurry...)

Sometimes wearing all those Mom-Wife-Employee-Person hats gets confusing and I end up doing a lousy job at one or all of them. So I wonder - should I take one of these freakin' hats off? If on any given day I'm going to be a lousy wife, distracted mother, defiant employee, and all around crank, is it worth it?

I'm relatively new to the whole experience of being a mother, and a working-from-home mother. And in the current economic situation where mergers and lay-offs and unemployment rates are all anyone can talk about, its easy to let the pressure build. Better not make ANY mistakes, better not EVER say NO to a request from a boss or a colleague, just in case they're looking for someone's position to "eliminate." Even if the request is unreasonable or nearly impossible. Just smile, say yes, and get it done.

In Mika's book (check back to an old post) she says women too easily let their jobs treat them like bad boyfriends. Making demands that aren't fair, asking for way more than they are giving, always taking and never giving, never asking "is this ok for you?". And women accept being treated that way because we believe the opportunities are limited for us, that this might be as good as it gets, that if we say "no" we'll never be asked again.  I've never been one of those "its better to be unhappy than be alone" chicks (honestly never understood it either) so I liked to believe I'd never let a job treat me that way either.

But having a family changes things and THE GREATER GOOD (dun dun duuunnn) takes on a whole new meaning. What is BEST for the family? What is the RIGHT thing to do? Is being a working Mom ok, even if it means sometimes I'm not at the top of ALL my games? (Is anyone ever at the top of all their games?) And my job feels less like a way to find fulfillment and provide for myself financially and more like something I can't mess up or it will ruin my family.

Or maybe that's too much pressure! Just seeing that in print makes me thing to myself "Gee, over dramatize much?!" 

So maybe some of my points are exaggerated, but the questions remain the same and are constantly being re-evaluated:

Can I do this?
Do I even want to do this?
Am I doing a good job at this?
Is the cost worth the benefits?
Is there a better way to go about this?
What's really important?

And really, I guess I'd rather ask myself those questions than blindly go through the motions. Because, so far, the answer is still Yes, I want to be a working Mom, and I think, so far, this is working out as the best thing for me, for my family and for my son.

But if I keep asking the question, and someday the answer is "No", at least I'll know its time to make a change, and hopefully, have the guts to make that change.