"Repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks" is how retired Brandeis University professor Linda Hirshman dismissed the work of stay-at-home mothers in her book "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World." Hers has been a common criticism for decades among feminist academics. Whenever I hear it, I wonder if the critics have ever held a job outside academia. For the harsh truth is that many jobs in our lives, whether in an office or out of it, at times will feel "repetitious," "socially invisible" or worse. That can be the nature of work and life. Women do untold damage to themselves by listening to societal prognosticators of what ought to make them happy rather than following their own hearts.

Second-wave feminists understandably glamorized the role of the guy "in the gray flannel suit" without taking into account the frustrated hopes and desires men themselves could feel in those roles. Then educated women who took the "mommy track" tried to make motherhood more complicated than it already was, as though making it harder would make it more important in societal eyes. "We professionalized it, and in doing so made ourselves a tiny bit ridiculous and more than a little crazy," baby boomer columnist Anna Quindlen wrote in 2004. "Women who eschewed the job market despite the gains of women within it sometimes wound up making mothering into a surrogate work world. ... [T]he unexamined child was not worth having: from late crawling to bad handwriting to mediocre SATs, all was grist for the worry mill. ... Our poor kids."

In both cases, women were inundated with unrealistic expectations of what their choices would bring them. Such dashed hopes contributed to a lot of unnecessary unhappiness. Columnist Dennis Prager accurately assessed why in a recent column on depression: "When our expectations are not fulfilled — and most are not — we can become unhappy and even bitter," he writes. "And when our expectations are fulfilled, we are no happier because fulfilled expectations undermine gratitude (we are not grateful when we get what we assume we will get) and gratitude is indispensable to happiness."

As G.K. Chesterton put it, "Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." Generation X-ers witnessed our mothers often tie themselves in psychological knots over frustrated expectations. We are trying to find a balance.

And I believe that balance comes with an understanding that few paths in life, even the most fulfilling, come without moments of monotony. At a retreat I once attended at a Cistercian abbey, the abbess warned prospective nuns that a contemplative's day involved much monotonous work. Spending a week with them, I found their work life (maintaining the abbey, gardens and the candy business that supported them) was no less monotonous than the daily lives of lawyers, accountants or stay-at-home parents who themselves can feel fatigued by the repetition of paperwork or peek-a-boo. In fact, with the convent's time for prayer, study and outdoor tasks in the gardens and on the grounds, their daily life seemed more in tune with the natural rhythms of the body and soul than the outside world.

My point is that God's callings for us rarely fit narrow societal molds of who women are supposed to be or what they are supposed to do. So tune out the noise and listen to the Holy Spirit's quiet stirrings in your soul. In the end, you may even find that you are unexpectedly happy.

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Elise Ehrhard is a free-lance writer from New England. Email her at {email eliseehrhard@yahoo.com}eliseehrhard@yahoo.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Elise Ehrhard.