Mindful Parenting: Childrearing is a Job. Pay Me and Get Over It.

It's hard to know where to begin. Do I launch into a critique of Erica Jong's rambling, contradictory column in the Wall Street Journal, in which she criticized attachment parenting -- essentially, it seemed, because it put too much pressure on mothers? How about pointing once again to the Salary Survey study that found stay-at-home mothers, if they do 10 common activities per week (including preparing meals, minor housecleaning, and driving kids around to various activities), are worth nearly $118,000 per year? How about the studies that show that people who have children are unhappier than those without? Or last year's factually incorrect attack on breastfeeding in The Atlantic Monthly, in which Hanna Rosin sacrificed scientific fact in order to justify how pissed off she was at society's lack of support for breastfeeding and other beneficial parenting practices?

I will start, instead, with one statement and one little story. The statement: conditions for parents, families, and mothers in particular are never going to improve if the only people given voice in the media are the ones criticizing others' parenting choices.

The story: Last night I got really pissed off at my husband, simply because he offered to help me.

You see, I haven't made much money since our son was born 3 years ago. It's a long story, which I won't go into here. But this week, for the first time since he was born, I am taking on paying work in my job as a copy editor and proofreader of textbooks. As our house flooded recently and we could use the extra income, my husband was happy to hear it. Last night we were discussing how many hours I could do per week, given that our son is in preschool 3 days a week but we also have a daughter almost 5 months old who needs my care.

"I can't do it the days I have John home," I said. "It's just not gonna happen." I've explained to my husband (and friends without small children) that using a computer with our 3-year-old around is just an exercise in frustration. I can't even check email, much less concentrate on a detailed proofreading job I get paid to do. Forget it.

He said, "Maybe I can help a bit in the mornings on those days, and you can do an hour or so of work."

Ah.

Of course I knew, and I know now, that this was a generous offer. My husband is emphatically not a morning person. But he is a modern father, one who cooks dinners and cleans the bathroom and, before we had the second baby, took our son out on weekends so I could have Saturday mornings off. And one who wants to support me in the choices I make regarding our life, my life, and our children's care. However. Behind that statement (and I emphasize that my husband never intended this meaning, and was simply trying to be thoughtful and helpful) is an unspoken point that all of the other work that I do every morning is worthless compared to something that actually earns money. Being the one to get up at 5:30 when our son says, "I all done sleeping," playing with him, helping him poop on the toilet and wash his hands with soap, making the granola we all eat, packing a healthy, tasty lunch for both of them, writing notes to our son's preschool teacher and speech therapist. Making breakfast, sweeping up spilled granola, nursing our baby daughter, making coffee, washing the dishes, writing checks for bills, making our son brush his teeth, changing our daughter's diaper, reminding our son for the zillionth time to say please and thank you. God. Let's not even talk about the rest of the day. Or my often smothered efforts at writing essays, novels, stories.

None of those things have ever earned an offer of help in the morning. (Since so many people like to criticize women for complaining too much, I emphasize once again that my husband is awesome. He just can't deal with mornings. My brain checks out after 6 at night, so we balance each other.)

Then again, I don't earn an income for any of those things. And in this fact lies the tangle that mothers these days have found themselves in. Because while some of us read books and practice what I think of as 'mindful parenting,' other mothers attack us for treating childrearing as a job, a job for which we are not paid.

"When I was a mother, all we had to do was keep the kids alive," I've heard. "If you're breastfeeding exclusively you're only doing it because you've been brainwashed to think of yourself as a cow." (Okay, that's a paraphrase.) "If you treat childrearing as a job, then you're taking it too seriously."

So, essentially, those of us who actually spend the time and effort to consciously do a good job of mothering? We suck. And we make life suck for all the other mothers who feel guilty for not doing what we try to do. We should all just wing it, all just throw out the research of the last 50 years, ignore the benefits of breastfeeding and attachment parenting, put our kids in preschool, take our kids out of preschool, spend more time listening to them, spend less time listening to them -- basically, do whatever feels like it takes the least effort.

None of the critics has actually come out and said this, but that's what it boils down to. If any of your childrearing choices feel like they take mental effort or thought, then you'd better stop. Because it means you're taking it all too seriously.

Yeah, that attitude has worked real well for humanity up until now. You can see how well we're all doing. No greed, no wars, no poverty, no wasteful use of non-renewable natural resources. Life's just roses all over the world.

You think the state of the world, the condition of humanity, the choices that the powerful make, the struggles we have for equality and justice have nothing to do with how we are raised? They have everything to do with how we are raised.

Those who criticize some of us for treating mothering as a job have a misconception as to what that job is. My children are not my job. My job is to understand my children in the best way I can, to provide an environment for them to become the most complete human beings they can be, and to instill in them certain lessons that, if we adults actually followed them, would make the world a livable place for everyone: share, let everyone else have some, wait your turn, say please and thank you, wash your hands with soap, listen (if adults just listened and paid attention to others' points of view, we could probably solve about 80% of our problems), don't hit, clean up after yourself, apologize when you've hurt someone, don't take more than your fair share, everything you do has consequences, good or bad, listen to your intuition, trust yourself, respect your choices, respect others' choices, if you've done something you regret, then own up to it. Goodness knows how many others I'm not even aware of.

The most important of all these lessons is respect. And here is where the job comes in. Before my children can learn to respect others, they need to respect themselves. And in order to do that, I have to help them understand that I respect them. I think this is the lesson that sticks in the craw of many critics. Somewhere in the back of our minds still lies the mantra that children should be seen and not heard, that their needs are unimportant and subservient to others' needs. Even I was raised somewhat that way. When I say that I try to listen to and respect my children, too many people hear "I let my life be ruled by my children."

Not. What. I. Said. Listen.

When my son says that he wants to watch more Curious George when he's already had several episodes, or play with my computer, or squeeze his baby sister, I try not to say just plain 'no.' That's all it means. I don't let him do these things. I don't let him negotiate for them. But I do take 20 seconds to focus on what he is asking for, show him that I understand what he wants, and explain why it isn't happening.

Sometimes in response he'll throw a fit and have to go into time-out. But over time the lesson does sink in -- both the lesson of what is allowed and what's not, and the lesson that I will listen to him, respect his wishes, and explain when they're not possible. And I use the same lesson to teach him respect for me: that sometimes Mummy has to work, that sometimes she needs quiet or some space, that he can't just take my things without asking for them, that I am a person, too, with wishes and needs of my own.

If I expect my children to honor my needs and my space and my possessions (and, I hope, take those lessons to their interactions with others in the outer world), the best way to achieve that is to give them the same respect.

This is a really hard job. It takes an immense amount of time and energy. I read piles of books and articles, looking for more tips on certain sticking points. I talk at length with other parents about their difficulties and problem-solving tips and frustrations. I practice a lot. I start over a lot. I have done more work in three years of parenting than I devoted to my Master's degree.

Yes, I take this job seriously. And because I and others do take it seriously, the world might possibly be a marginally better place in the next generation.

Therefore, I think we should be paid for this job. I think the taxpayer should pay all stay-at-home parents a salary. You think I'm kidding? We pay politicians crazy amounts of money to solicit campaign contributions and future job offers from lobbyists in order to push through laws that they neither read nor understand -- I mean, we pay them to pass thoughtful legislation for the benefit of their constituents. How is that any different from paying full-time parents for raising the next generation in ways that are most beneficial to society?

Of course, the danger is that many full-time parents might do a bad job. There's little quality control. But seeing as how the aforementioned politicians largely fail to do the job they're paid for (concentrating instead on aforementioned campaign donations, thinking up nasty things to say about people they dislike, and trying to make sure the other party can't do anything they want to do), and seeing as how I can think of a number of bank executives who did a really shitty job and still walked away with millions of dollars each, I don't see why it's such a stretch.

The easiest way to put a stop to the "Mommy Wars" (for a critique on that concept, read my post Declaring War on the Mommy Wars) is to simply make full-time parenting a paid position funded by the taxpayer, like Congress or public schools, with Social Security benefits and a monthly check.

Personally, I'm going to continue treating this as a job. Maybe if I raise my children right, the next generation will pass more family-friendly policies and will start giving mothers some compensation besides brunch on Mother's Day, rights to half our 'working' spouse's Social Security benefits, and really repetitive essays about our children's love being all the compensation we need. And maybe a day will come when that is true, too.

[Note that during the time I spent writing this, I also made breakfast for 3 people, ironed a shirt, made coffee, nursed my daughter, showered and dressed, reminded my husband of tomorrow's haircut appointment, and 3 times took my son to poop on the potty and wash his hands with soap. I'd like to see my husband do that while performing the job he gets paid lots of money for!]

Letter to a New Mother: Welcome to a Life of Guilt

A friend of mine is expecting a baby very soon, and in writing a letter addressing some of her anxieties about the adventure ahead, I found this treatise on guilt spilling out. Inappropriate for her, right now, but a little discussion of the guilt felt by Mothers with Brains is sadly needed. Because no one speaks of it, we feel guilty even for our guilt.


Dear Mother,

Welcome to the most fulfilling and challenging job on the planet. You will have moments of tremendous joy, of insights and awakenings, and a gentle shaking out of the bag that used to contain what you thought of as 'priorities.' You will feel weariness and pleasure, frustration and ecstasy.

You will also, from now on, feel guilty every day for the rest of your life.

If you choose, as I did, to stay home with your child, you will feel guilty for not earning money. You will feel guilty for spending money. When your money-earning partner sighs in worry over stresses at work or the economy, or asks ever-so-lightly about what the $70 at the grocery store went to, and if there's any way to shave down the household budget, you will be flooded with defensive responses, any of which will lead to an argument that -- underslept and over-stretched and unsupported by society as you are -- neither of you needs.

The defensiveness will come from your knowledge that, although you spend a grueling 16 or so hours a day giving the best of yourself to your child and your home (not to mention the frequent night interruptions), and you are certain in your soul that this job you've chosen is the most important on the planet, you do not in fact earn a cent for it, neither in real income nor in a retirement plan.

In a simpler world, or a mythical past, this 'woman's work,' the nurturing that is so crucial to a child's survival and the harmony of a household and the fabric of a community, may not have been paid for, but its value was nevertheless acknowledged in some way. Unfortunately, no matter how much someone appreciates your cooking or your plentiful and nutritious breast milk, it doesn't mean much if you never actually get to choose, or reject, the job of caregiver and homemaker.

The feminist revolution gave us that false choice. I call it false because it, also, is no longer a true choice. The acceptance of women into the workaday world created, suddenly, an economy in which, for most families, both parents must work simply to get by. This condition is now an accepted fact of modern American life, the conundrum of middle class existence -- working full-time to pay for quality child care.

But the choice is false for more philosophical reasons than basic modern economics. Most of us women, we modern mothers, want both. We want fulfillment intellectually, socially, emotionally, and physically. We have ambition. We want to be presidents and enterpreneurs and artists. And we want, also, to be the mothers our children need us to be: we want the early attachment, the nurturing and the thrill of watching our own small person grow and learn and discover.

If you are at home with your child, you will feel guilty for putting nothing in the family coffers, and you will feel guilty for the boredom that creeps over you after stacking blocks for half an hour or reading the same book repeatedly.

But if you go back to work, no matter how much you love your job, you will feel guilty for failing your child. For a newborn, the attachment created in the first six months provides a sense of self and security the child can never recreate. You will feel guilty for not being there.

You will feel torn apart when you have to leave your sick baby, or when separation anxiety kicks in and every drop-off at the day care is a re-enactment of being tragically parted for life. You will feel resentful that the work day, and success in your career, is constructed in such a way that it makes fulfillment as a mother nearly impossible. You will feel cheated by the empty phrase "work-life balance."

There is no out for a new mother, no matter what you choose. You will feel guilty when showering while your baby is crying. You will feel guilty for not singing to and rocking your baby all night long when you desperately need sleep. And if, for the tiniest of seconds, for the most momentary moment, if you look at your colicky newborn, who's been crying for two hours straight, with weary loathing, you will feel like the most evil and ungrateful individual on the planet. And you will know you can never mention this to anyone, because society will judge you as harshly and as blindly as you judge yourself. No matter how loving you are throughout the day, no matter how giving and how full of enjoyment with every interaction, that one moment will feel like poison.

This is when you will realize that the guilt must go.

Our society does not give Mothers with Brains choices. I was once at a corporate gathering of women who had come in hundreds to hear Naomi Wolf (author of The Beauty Myth) speak. She was enthusiastic and eloquent about her new project of empowering women in the corporate world and leadership roles.

At question time, one woman stood up to ask, "How do you balance your work and your life," a question always at the forefront of every hardworking mother's mind.

Wolf shook her head. She was sorry to say, she informed us, that in the current economic and corporate structure of America, "there is no such thing as work-life balance. My answer is that I work for myself. It's the only way you can really do it."

We can only overcome the guilt by looking at the struggles of our lives upside-down. We are brought up to expect certain things from adult life. Certain success, a certain style of work. For women to ever be truly, completely fulfilled, those expectations have to be flipped on their head.

In the first place, the job of motherhood needs less sappy recognition than in the style of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and a whole lot more economic backing. As long as motherhood and homemaking is completely unpaid in a world that values everything only in money, then in the workplace women will always be held back. Why? Because at the back of every corporate monkey in charge will be the thought -- perhaps suppressed and unconscious but still there -- that "she could always just stay home and raise babies."

Whatever the misogyny and prejudice of that thought, the real crime is in the word "just," which makes my job, and perhaps yours, into nothing more than a frivolous hobby.

Second, I'm afraid we have to turn out backs on the entire structure of our workday and economy. Its current collapse has shown that unbridled greed and growth simply do nothing for people, individuals, societies, the world at large. But more than that, it is hard-edged. It is built around hours and minutes and dollars and cents, none of which, in fact, have anything to do with the stuff of life: food, love, rivalry, joy, ambition, community, breath, family, and a search for meaning.

The system pushes Mothers with Brains into a frenzy of overachievement first by undervaluing our work, which actually keeps the planet alive, and second by overvaluing work that pretends to keep the planet alive, but which in fact kills it physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Work-life balance will only happen from the ground up, when we investigate what's under our various guilts and question our and others' values.

It won't make you feel less guilty for turning off the baby monitor so you can shower in peace, or for wanting to run away and crawl under a rock when you're suffering crushing sleep deprivation. But it might mean we have more time to talk about those issues, and others that truly matter to us. To bring them out in the light rather than condemning ourselves for every choice, however unavoidable, and every failing, however illusory.

Common Sense Study: Virtual Reality, Television, and Budding Brains

My mother was telling me the other day that someone's done a study on virtual reality, and discovered that, when people are reading and engrossed in a book, what happens in their head is essentially the same as virtual reality.

To which I can only roll my eyes and wonder if my tax dollars went to pay for said study. In other words, duh.

This reminds me of a study I read a year ago on Broadsheet, one that found out that the sight of their baby's smile triggers peaceful, loving hormones in mothers. Gasp! I mean, really. You couldn't just say, figure that out from looking at people?

And yet, it seems like we so often need studies like these, because people's grasp of common sense is so slippery. We need studies like these -- seemingly expensive and unecessary -- to reaffirm the obvious for the mass population that logic brushes only tangentially.

For example, the news this last week or two that bank executives in the US are using government bailout money to give themselves huge bonuses. Everyone's shocked. And all I can say is that you didn't need a PhD in anything so complex as underwater basket weaving to have seen that coming. The assumption that the executives would have been chastened and suddenly behave in a fiscally responsible manner defies even the most basic logic.

If any of the blind people in government or think tanks had asked me for advice, this is what I would have mapped out for them:

A. Greedy people are greedy.
B. Greedy people are generally greedy rather than smart (they use their brains to acquire more of what they're greedy for), and they're certainly never altruistic.
C. Greedy people made decisions that made them lots of money and flattened the economy.
D. The government then gave the greedy people more money, trusting said greedy people to use it wisely.

What do you think happens next?

This is all aside from the common sense realization that an economy based on people buying stuff they don't need with money they don't have is by definition unhealthy, no matter how fast it grows.

Personally, I'd go for a common sense study that researches something more useful than what happens in our brains while we're reading, or even what happens if you hand a bunch of bank executives billions of dollars with no strings attached.

I'd like to lobby hard for a study that goes into depth to examine what happens to the brain development of children exposed to any significant telelvision time before the age of three. I read a survey result recently that found that 45% of American children under age three have a television in their bedrooms. Situations like this, and DVD players in cars are, I'm willing to bet, far more damaging to brain development than, say, being exposed to moderate amounts of wine in utero.

When I saw that little statistic in my Mothering magazine, I flipped immediately to the section on the visual cortex in my favorite parenting book, What's Going on in There? by Lise Eliot, a neurobiologist. The visual cortex is essential to brain development, and does a lot of its growing in those first three years. Television is not evil per se, but watching it has an unknown and likely huge impact on the tiny brains of infants.

I've met many parents who have proclaimed to me how quiet their kids are in front of Spongebob, or how they love to watch Baby Einstein. They never make the connection that the mental fixation, and glazed expression directed toward flickering pixels and images that will never in fact interact with them, has to be hugely damaging to babies' tiny, developing brains.

That's a study I'd get behind. After all, even though my son has never met television or fruit juice, he will be spending the rest of his life interacting with children, and then grown-ups, who did. Seemingly simple parenting decisions like this can have unforseen and enormous consequences. Without a study -- confirming what, to me, seems to be common sense -- it seems that we can't change people's behavior.