Parenting

My letter of resignation from motherhood

After head lice broke out in her family, Kerri Sackville decided it was time to call it quits on the whole parenting thing.

A Letter of Resignation

To My Family & Friends,

After around thirty seconds consideration and with a heavy heart, I have decided to resign from my position as Mother.

I have enjoyed working with my children for the past nearly fourteen years. Unfortunately, however, this latest outbreak of lice has made my position as head of the family (no pun intended) to be untenable.

There are several reasons why I have come to my decision.

  1. There was no mention made of the possibility of lice when I took on the position of Mother. I feel that I was tricked into a role that I did not agree to.

  2. Removing lice from my children’s hair is virtually a full time job in itself. There is simply no time in the day to attend to other parenting duties, such as feeding my kids, bathing them, doing the laundry, and drinking wine.

  3. Lice are revolting.

  4. Lice removal lotions smell terrible.

  5. My children are clean. Lice, apparently, like clean hair. This creates a paradox which leads to severe cognitive dissonance which causes me extreme stress.

  6. I can’t claim worker’s compensation for my extreme stress because Motherhood doesn’t come with insurance.

  7. My children complain that their heads are itchy then they complain when I put the lice potion on them then they complain even more when I use the fine toothed comb. I can’t win. What is the point of a job where I cannot win?

  8. There is no pay. There has never been any pay, but this is completely unacceptable now that I have to remove lice.

So goodbye children, and goodbye Motherhood. It’s been fun. Some of the time. The rest of the time has been lice.

I wish me the best of luck with all my future endeavours.

Kerri

This story was originally published on Life and Other Crises.

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