to want to scream?!

[BearFoxBear]

Arrrggghhhh my mother!!

I've got a 14 month old ds (who is a total handful!), a husband who works hundreds of miles away most of the time, and just went back to work 3 months ago. So far, so normal.

But this week I got promoted - hurrah! I'm now head of department in a really complex, fast paced industry. I'm delighted and I worked my ass off for it.

My mum's reaction was underwhelming ("oh, that's good") and since I told her she has mentioned multiple times - out of nowhere - that I'm no good at keeping my house tidy.

Really mum, really?!! I'm bloody busy, and not a fanatical clean freak who claims that my house is a disaster if there's a cup on the coffee table!

Please make me feel better by telling me that your mum just doesn't get what you do/how hard you need to work to get back into it after maternity leave/how hard it is to look after a whirlwind of a toddler on your own!

Congratulations on your new job

You & your mum are judging success in different ways. Your mum is of an era maybe where a woman's job was to keep house & having a sparkling house defined you as a good mother. You are not in this era & define part of your success in your job outside the home. Neither of you are wrong you just have different definitions of 'work'.

Get a cleaner :)

Thank you

The thing is, she's really not! You're right about different priorities though. It's just really annoying that we live miles away, have no local support, so I'm on my own and working hard a lot of the time, and she can't see that it's therefore pretty damn good to also manage a promotion.

And I will get a cleaner

Maybe she wishes she'd had such opportunities. Point out that only you can do your job, only you can raise your DS, but it doesn't matter who does housework. Then get a cleaner.

My mother hasn't the first clue what I'm talking about when it comes to work stuff. Her eyes glaze over and she starts with the "mm", "yeah" and "oh...right".

I rarely make the mistake of bringing up work in front of her anymore, but if I do I always end up feeling really frustrated.

I never complain about work to her, as her immediate reaction is that I must be somehow in the wrong- I mean, the big important men in charge can't possibly be to blame so...

Oh, and the other thing she does is come over to the house and start doing random things "to help" which are actually no help at all, e.g. If we're sitting in the sittingroom, she'll start bending down to pick up fluff from the rug, and then she'll leave a ball of fluff on the side table . Or she'll use the loo and then afterwards I'll find a toilet roll insert on my hall table, or my kitchen counter or somewhere. Er.. thanks for "tidying" mum but we do have a recycling basket.

Maybe that's it underthefloorboards.

Nomontagues, are we sisters? Although my mum does actually clean in a manner which suggests that she can't believe that anyone could be so slovenly (I'm not!) - she recently refused to heat a tin of soup until she'd cleaned my oven because it was too dirty to use. I couldn't be arsed getting into an argument about how ludicrous it was to not feed herself when she was apparently "ravenous" when all she had to do was put a clean pot onto a clean hob, then put the soup into a clean bowl.

She's like Kim and Aggie's annoying, anal sister!

And I've totally outed myself to my actual MN user sister

Well done on the promotion OP!

I never had this from my mum because everything I know about sluttery, poor housekeeping and bad wifery was learnt from her so she probably figured it was wiser not to open her mouth!

The beauty of having your mum properly far away (on another land mass) is that you get plenty of warning of visits and thus can maintain the illusion of perfect housekeeping :)

Thank you Far

So I need to move further away?

I'm working from home today - maybe I should text her to say that I've put a washing on AND done some dishes