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A MOTHER'S PERSPECTIVE





I am a married woman and I have just had my first baby 👶. I got pregnant during my service year and gave birth just after I had passed out. My husband is a teacher and owns a coaching center for primary school children. I intend getting a job after my daughter clocks one but I have this voice in my head that keeps telling me to face reality. The reality here is that my chances of getting a job are slim as a married woman and a mother and a low-class citizen. Once a year or two passes and I am still unemployed, it would take the grace of God to get a suitable job without being tossed around like a tennis ball by employers.

I am scared that my reality will be ending up as a housewife which is not a bad thing if only that’s what I want for myself. On the contrary, I want to be an educationist. I want to work with a school not because it is the best job for a married woman with a child but because I am one of the ones who love teaching and want it as a career path 😏.

Recently, a friend of mine visited to see my baby girl for the first time and we got talking, especially about seeking employment anyhow, somehow. She related her ordeals at interviews and how she had sent out more applications than was even necessary. She confessed to even sending applications for positions she knew she wasn’t fit for or won’t suit her person all in the name of being employed. I felt sorry for her but felt worse about myself. I won’t be the first mother who would be told NO at interviews because I have a child who would distract me from working my brains out for one organization or the other.

When my baby is old enough and I go for interviews they would ask for experience which I clearly will not have. And if I dream of working in those big-man school they will ask for Masters and Mistresses or PhD. I will therefore, be left with the OMO TALIKA school that will allow me to keep my child in the school premises and deduct out of my salary (15000 monthly). 

I do not have a very wealthy husband who would set up a school for me and if that should be our plan at the moment, it might take us donkey years to achieve that dream because nothing seems to be decreasing in Nigeria at all and saving to buy something is becoming impossible. As for getting a loan, you must be a salary earner and I would not want to burden my early marriage with issues as such right now.

I’m hoping that I am fortunate enough to be employed by a school, one that will not ask for a decade experience but will allow me to spread my wings and fly as a human being. Yes, having experience is good. I believe that those who have gained it overtime were once inexperienced. Please, my people let us give one another a chance to be better, to improve. Let us stop with this “it must be an expert or nothing else” attitude of ours. Nobody was born an expert. And employer, in case you are reading this, give mothers a chance, thank you. For now, I will work on my self. I will become valuable even if I have not the experience so that when I finally go for that dream job, the firm will need me even more than I'll need them 💪.

A Shared Experience.
Don't Forget to Be Honest!

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