Every generation has its own version of Supermom. Way back, there was the loyal and less-loved Leah of the Hebrew bible. Later came the steely, yet loving Mother in Little Women. Today, there’s the wise (not to mention hip and hot) mom who has become a staple of any number of prime time television shows. Throughout time, the Supermom has stood as a Platonic ideal to be both marveled at and inspired by.

There’s an argument to be made that being a Supermom used to be easier than is it today. After all, imagine June Cleaver’s average day. Get up, squeeze into a girdle (okay, that couldn’t have been very pleasant), throw together a few meals and make sure that Ward, Wally and the Beav had an endless supply of freshly-ironed shirts. Other than dealing with the crippling boredom, how hard could that have been?

Supermom’s job description was considerably beefed up back in the 70s, when it became expected that she, either out of ambition or financial necessity, add full time work—or better yet, a career—to the demands of housecleaning, cooking and getting the kids to school on time.

Of course, that model supposed a simultaneous movement by male partners to take on an equal share of work related to house and kids. But in many homes, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Despite participating in the workforce in unprecedented numbers, women still do the bulk of unpaid labour in the home, including housework and childcare. Statistics Canada reported that in 2003, about 21 per cent of Canadian women were doing roughly 30 hours of housework each week, compared to about eight per cent of men. The numbers represented almost no change since the previous census in 1996.

According to research done at Ohio State University, women still feel more responsible for taking care of children and housework.
The newly published study, co-authored by Liana Sayer, suggests that even when women do get a break, they find it hard to enjoy the down time. “Among mothers, free time may be too entangled with caregiving to be the ‘pause that refreshes,'” Sayer is quoted as saying.

That’s a thesis that Kathy Buckworth supports. As the mother of four who’s held a variety of senior corporate positions, Buckworth is well acquainted with the disquiet that can invade any peaceful moment the working mom can find. There’s always the feeling, she says, that one should be doing something-usually for somebody else.

Disturbed by the media images of supermoms, celebrity moms and soccer moms, Buckworth decided, after the birth of her fourth child, to expose the truth of the supermom myth. The result is The Secret Life of Supermom, a funny, subversive and insightful look at the modern mother.

“After my last child, I had so many people telling me that they didn’t know how I could do it all,” recalls Buckworth. “Well, the truth is that I wasn’t doing it all, and I didn’t think anybody should be expected to. I realized that the bar of expectations for women had been set too high—by ourselves or by other forces, I’m not sure—and I really felt that we all had to lower our expectations and bring more balance to the way we evaluate our lives.”

At the same time, Buckworth was shocked when she began noticing how many women she met who told her they felt like they were doing everything badly.

“I know that feeling—the guilt you have when you’re at home with kids that work isn’t getting done and the guilt at work when you’re not with your kids,” says Buckworth. “I began to wonder why we weren’t congratulating ourselves for all the things we do accomplish during the day.”

Why do women continue to assume the lion’s share of house and child-related work? Buckworth isn’t sure. “We just hang on to that innate sense of obligation and responsibility, in part because it’s assumed that it’s our work. My husband is a modern fellow, but when he asks me if I want him to put the kids to bed, I realize that it would never occur to me to ask him that when I’m putting them to bed. It’s my job, somehow.”

While Buckworth thinks it may still be a generation or two before women and men take equal responsibility for work in the home, she does believes things are changing. It’s an evolution she’s witnessing in her own home. “The other day when I was going out for the evening, my three year old asked if daddy was going to babysit. My six year old answered that daddy doesn’t babysit his own children.”

The bottom line, says Buckworth is that women must begin to take a realistic approach to what they can get done in any given day, and continue to be vocal about sharing the load with their partners.

“After all,” says Buckworth, “even if they don’t share the guilt, you can certainly insist they share the labour.”

Kathy Buckworth’s new book, Supermom, A Celebration of All You Do, will be published in March, 2006. The “true sequel” to The Secret Life of Supermom, A Journey to the Dark Side, will be published in 2007. For more information about Ms. Buckworth’s writing, and a list of personal appearances, visit www.kathybuckworth.com

By Vicky Sanderson
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Vicky Sanderson is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and a variety of other publications.

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