We can be mothers and workers at the same time. We don't need to stay at home just because we have children. With motherhood we acquire considerable skills and knowledge, which can be very useful even at work. It's true: we're tired. It is true: that when children fall ill, we may have to give up work to take care of our babies. We still are human, don't forget it. Yet I don't understand why a man who becomes a father does not have all these problems at work, and often not even in social life, as if we mothers had the precise duty (and destiny) of sacrificing ourselves to take care of everything and everyone. Someone may consider me a distorted mother, because I send my daughter to the nursery school 8 hours a day, to work. Well, working for me doesn't mean just bringing home the salary. Working is a formative and growing moment, it is an opportunity to have personal satisfactions and possibilities, which also affect happiness: to give up work means to renounce a space for myself, and I need it. My wish would be to see more women than with a smile, even if tired, go to work, proud of being mothers and workers, without being misjudged by other women and their own families, supported by the state and institutions. I fear that for many more years this will remain only a hope.
