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If you’re a manager and you don’t like your colleagues, team, or job — you’re lucky, you can quit.

But being a parent: the one job you’re stuck with, even when you feel like shouting, “I resign!”

It’s a job without perks. You’re always on duty, working antisocial hours, for zero pay.

Your appraisal comes around daily, delivered by the harshest of critics, who determine you’re simply the worst person ever to occupy the post.

Of course, there are those that quit. When childless, I may have judged those folk unfairly, thinking them selfish and weak.

But it turns out to be one of the hardest jobs there is. Certainly amongst the most stressful. And the most unsupported.

I must admit that despite an emotionally draining and intrusive adoption assessment lasting three years, I still wasn’t prepared for how hard it would be.

You think, well, if we give all the love and kindness we have in us, everything will be okay. But it’s not like that at all.

Here is a job where even if you fail in your performance review, you’re stuck with it. “You wanted this job,” everyone tells us, “you deal with it.”

And so we must.