By Denise Kyeremeh, ’23
Meal prepping has been a foreign concept to me since I started hearing the phrase in high school. The social media influencers that I watched would make aesthetic videos of themselves placing broccoli, chicken, and quinoa in several bowls to be eaten throughout the week. I remember being unimpressed with this task because growing up, that is just how we ate. Every week, usually on Sunday night, my mom would make a variety of different things like rice, stew, soup, and meat, then she would package them into containers and place them in the fridge.
Growing up, I only knew what it was like to have a working mom. As a nurse, my mom worked 12-hour shifts and attended school part-time. She was gone most of the day, almost every day. My mom made herself as accessible as she could: by the time I was in elementary school, I had the phone number to her floor at the hospital memorized, and I would call several times a day. I’m grateful that my dad filled in where he had to so that we could get to sports games and get picked up from school. I often think about how adaptable my parents are because they were able to provide my siblings and me with a normal childhood even though they had no guidebook and very little support.
My parents grew up in a different context than the one they raised us in. It’s normal for kids in Ghana to move away from home in high school to attend boarding school and rely on their parents less for things like transportation or making dinner. In Ghana, many families have hired help to assist with housework, or the teenage children are responsible for cooking and cleaning. On this side, the American dream for my family actually came with less support, which my scrappy parents always navigated with grace. I never thought that they would shut down any activity I wanted to participate in because of money or lack of resources.
For a long time, I thought that my parent’s dynamic was valiant. They made it look easier than I know it had to have been. For some reason, I looked down on the kids who handed their moms their backpacks as they got off the bus after school (probably because those kids really could have carried their backpacks for another few minutes until they got home but I digress). Maybe I thought it was more honorable to take the difficult path: to struggle to balance tasks, go to events, and generally take care of children.
In middle school, a friend of mine told me that she couldn’t wait to be a stay-at-home mom and drive her kids around in a Chevy Suburban. At the time, I thought that was an embarrassing thing to admit. Where was her ambition? How could her greatest hope be to become a mother and take care of her kids?
I looked forward to building my career and fitting my family around it someday. Some things always gave me pause though. Who would pick my kids up from school if they got sick and I couldn’t leave work? Would I be able to find the time and energy to provide my kids with unique opportunities to learn things outside of school?
Over the years, my ideas around work and family have shifted dramatically. When I look back, I still see parents who worked tirelessly. I also see myself as a child crying on Saturday mornings as my mom packed her bag to go to school. I never felt like we had enough time to spend together.
Mixed in with my ideas about working moms were principles of feminism that suggested that as a woman I should want to be a high-achieving professional because we have not always had equal opportunity. Maybe it was the images in history class of Rosie the Riveter and Gloria Steinem. I felt like I would be wasting my potential if all I amounted to was being a wife and a mom. The older I get, I question what will matter to me when I’m old. The pandemic also made me realize how important it is to invest in family because sometimes they will end up being all we have.
Now I see how my mom’s sacrifice, while necessary for our family, is not the only way to honor my kids. I used to think that the only way to show my kids how strong I was and teach them to be strong was by working. I think it’s important to teach my kids how to pursue their ambitions and that does not mean I have to work a full-time job to do so. Not every family has the means for only one parent to work. However, if my future family does, I want to prioritize what is best for them rather than striving for corporate success all to be applauded for being the woman who “does it all.”
I still want to do something that I enjoy and find meaningful, but I no longer feel the need to compete for the highest position or showcase the lack of work-life balance as a trophy of success. I think it’s just as impressive to use my talents to create a safe and healthy home as it is to be the most well-known CEO in the United States. If my kids don’t know a mom that meal preps, that’s alright. They can just come and ask me for a snack.
