I thought back to a conversation I’d had with another mother on the playground. Her oldest had joined kindergarten last September. Her youngest is a month younger than our toddler. She had been ‘at home’ on maternity leave for more than a year, but until she secured a spot in the daycare, couldn’t return to her fulltime job as an English teacher in an institute in the neighbouring town. She asked if I wrote down in the application to daycare that I worked full-time. I told her I had indeed. It suddenly dawned on me how much I have been working beyond all the labour that is required as a primary caregiver. I felt, briefly, exhausted.

I have been very conscious about telling our child that I work. Because I am sometimes afraid he might think sitting in front of a laptop isn’t work. It got me thinking about what our perceptions are of working bodies. Does that change over time? My mother worked every day of the week for the first two decades of my life almost. I must have resented her being away but I also never got to witness what it looked like to see her at work because her work happened in the domestic spaces of rich people’s homes, since she was a private nurse. I had some inkling of what my father did as an inspection engineer, but even now, I wouldn’t be able to describe it to you. Sometimes I wonder what our child considers as our work. Does it matter?

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Following this train of thought led me to how, within South Asian mentalities, the labours of parents are often weaponised by them against their children. The logic is something like ‘we work so hard so that you can do xyz’ and I wonder if what gets passed down is a sense of guilt, if children are made to feel responsible for the fact that their parents have to be away? Do they shoulder the burden of their parents’ obligation to work?

I told myself this morning that I want our child to see the pleasure I derive from my work, especially the vast array of things that demand my labour, from teaching to writing to editing to reading and viewing art. It means I need to restructure my schedule even more so that the volume is reduced, and the quality of my output is enhanced, somehow. Because as much as I want our child to know what a working mother looks like, I also want him to witness a woman at leisure, enjoying her rest, exploring hobbies and being present.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.