The much-discussed 'count' by Vida: Women in the Literary Arts shows a saddening lack of women writers represented in literary publications, daily publications, book reviews, etc. Here's one sliver of a reason why:
9:30 a.m. The children have breakfasted and nursed, been toileted and diapered, medicined and vitamined, swept off and wiped. The baby is down for her reliable morning nap (the afternoon one is hit-and-miss, and requires long periods of holding and rocking). The 3-year-old is playing happily with his train tracks on the floor after I spent 20 minutes helping him set up an elaborate layout with plenty of bridges, tunnels, curves, and switches.
I've had two cups of coffee and even the breakfast dishes are washed. The new album from Bright Eyes is playing. So while Alex sleeps and John plays, I sneak out a story that I've been writing and rewriting for 5 years, and am hoping to send to a journal this week. (Even though I still feel shaky in fiction, creative nonfiction being my strength, and this journal has off-handedly rejected several of my nonfiction essays. But they mentioned on Facebook that they're looking for stories, so I keep working. When I can.)
I sit down on the rocking chair slightly out of sight, rest the clipboard on my knee, and uncap a pen.
John looks toward the kitchen. "Mummy, I want a hug." Gripping Percy the green engine, he trots over and climbs onto my lap.
Five minutes later, and again ten minutes later, I ask if he's ready to play with his tracks again. "No," he says, running Percy up and down my arm, "I just hugging now."
And in no time flat it's time to get the baby up and make lunch.
Of course I'm going to put the story down and give him a hug. There's a tug, an "I wish I could just have half an hour and then get lots of hugs," but there isn't really a choice. Does this make me not-a-writer? Are you a writer only if you push away the hug and stick to the story? No. It just makes me a writer who doesn't get things done very quickly. A writer who is always tired, and always trying. I'm betting a lot of women writers who are also caregivers find themselves in a similar position.
(I did attempt to keep working by offering to read John the story I was working on. While he was patient enough, and I always do a fair bit of editing while reading aloud, it is a bit hard to engage in serious rewriting when you've got your "This is George. He was a good little monkey and always very curious" voice going on.)
Showing posts with label guilt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guilt. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Friday, June 26, 2009
Declaring War on the Mommy Wars
A Pissed-off Mother and the Nonviolent Revolution
It was my husband’s fault, and started like this: “I’m just trying to teach him something. Come on, he’s the only kid in day care who can’t feed himself and doesn’t talk yet.”
I was supposed to be going out for a run while Ian took Saturday morning duty and fed our 20-month-old his cereal. Instead, I burst into tears as Ian blinked in confusion and our son John banged his spoon on the table.
“What’s wrong?” asked the tired, slightly overworked husband whom I knew had woken up with a headache and was doing his best not to be grumpy.
I just shook my head. There is no possible way to explain to a non-mother the load of guilt that came crashing down with his innocent words. What he heard was a simple statement of fact: John doesn’t yet use a spoon to feed himself, and his words so far are limited to warped versions of “plop,” “cheese,” and “thank you,” with slightly clearer “uh-oh,” “all done,” and “meow.”
What I heard was a repetition of the same thing I hear every time someone sends me a link to one of those damn articles about militant breastfeeders, or stay-at-home moms versus employed moms, or an attack on attachment parenting, or an attack by non-parents on mothers who dare to complain about the stresses of motherhood, or a debate about the merits of reading and Baby Einstein, and when and how to potty-train. What I heard was this: You’re a bad mother. Every choice you make is wrong. You are not doing enough. You’re doing it all in the wrong way. You should be more involved, pay more attention, spend more time, slice off the rest of your identity to devote every iota of yourself to raise the most well-adjusted and intelligent child according to the requirements and schedule we have laid out for you. Either that, or hand him over to caregivers who will do a better job.
Maybe I should blame it on the article I read the day before, in which a writer beat up on mothers who post pictures of their kids as their Facebook profile photo (yes, I’ve done it). She, as so many others have done, lumped me in with a non-existent camp of mothers who are intellectual idiots, socially inept, enamored of their children, and burying our own lives in order to spoil a bunch of cute parasites. Nevermind that I have a degree in mathematics, still do symbolic logic for fun, like to discuss Proust with those who have read him, had a career as a good copy editor, and am a working writer.
It’s not I who defines myself only by my child. It’s you. As long as my intellectual conversations are sometimes spiced with the word “poop,” I am dismissed as a brainless twit. On the other side, as long as my conversations about our children are peppered with the phrase “sometimes I just want to run away,” I’m a selfish beast who doesn’t love my son.
I am sick of it. There are CEOs and politicians getting paid millions, if not billions, to screw up their corporations, screw over the people who depend on them, and screw every last piece of life out of the planet. And all mothers can do is yell at one another for not doing the most difficult, most important, and least-paid job on the planet absolutely perfectly?
My bursting into tears wasn’t my husband’s fault. He’s doing the best he can, and, smart person, does not read all the parenting and Mommy War articles I do. Maybe it’s my fault for reading them at all, one more way I’m screwing up as a woman and a mother.
In the twenty months since my son was born, I’ve learned two things: One, that a mother’s instinct is almost always right. That doesn’t mean her decisions are right. But if she’s in touch with herself, her child, and an inner voice that has nothing to do with have read Dr. Spock and Dr. Sears twenty times, her instincts as to what is best for her child, and what her child’s needs are, are generally going to be on the mark.
The second thing is that society—the media, other mothers, often family, and a lot of people in the community—are going to do everything they can to both drown out that voice, and to convince a mother that her instincts are utterly wrong. In fact, the message is, those instincts will damage your child’s social adaptation, ruin his or her chances of getting into a good college, give him or her asthma, obesity, a complete lack of independence, fear of dogs, an addiction to television and sugar, probably a drug problem, psychological insecurity, and lack of judgment. And they’ll hate vegetables and reading unless you do it all just right.
I would like to say, politely, to all these people, shut up. On both sides. Just. Stop. Yelling. Information and education is essential. Expressing your frustration is necessary so others don’t feel ashamed for feeling the same way. But this is, without a doubt, the hardest job on earth. Any mother out there dealing with guilt or anger or bewilderment or frustration, do you really want to lay any more of that on the shoulders of other mothers?
*****
I have opinions, even strong ones, about many things regarding motherhood. I believe breastfeeding and breast milk have incalculable health benefits that formula can never compete with. But I also know that breastfeeding can also be difficult or impossible. And, having used a hospital-grade pump for a month when my son was in the NICU, I know it feels exactly like being a milked cow and have trouble imagining making time for it during employment, especially with an unsympathetic boss. I also know babies raised on formula who are doing beautifully.
I believe a baby physically needs its mother for the first three months of life, possibly even six. But I also know that, in a society that seems headed on a crash-course of productivity, believing that everyone needs to work until they’re ground into dust, two weeks with your new baby is a blessing. Three months is a priceless gift, and six months an unheard-of treasure. A professional woman who can spend six months devoted to her baby and then go straight back into her career without being sidelined or passed over for promotion? Millions of us envy you handful.
I believe children who don’t go into nature regularly will turn out more anxious and have weaker cognitive reasoning than children who spend less time with toys that beep and more time watching trees and birds. I believe plastic is akin to a slow-acting poison, and that the powder-come-gel in disposable diapers is probably toxic. But I use Pampers; my son has plenty of plastic toys. And I know how hard it can be to get outside each day when there are a million demands on your time.
I believe people who think parenthood is a lifestyle choice akin to picking out a car or switching careers are fools. But I also pity them, because if they don’t believe that parenthood is a community effort, then they don’t believe in a functional society.
I believe that being a mother has added dimension and depth to my life I could never have imagined. But I also believe those who choose not to have children can live and love just as deeply.
So right here, right now, I am declaring war on the Mommy Wars. Or, more to the point, I am declaring a truce on the Mommy Wars within myself and my relationships. I am laying down my weapons. This is the nonviolent revolution, the new motherhood.
If you want information or advice, I will give it without judgment. If you want to talk about the difficulties of motherhood, and the guilt and the fears, I’m in. If you hate yourself for having lost your temper or having lost your identity, I want you to know you’re not alone. If you just want to talk about a good book, and not worry that mentioning poop in passing will scare someone off, I’m with you.
If you give your children love, and food, and change their diapers relatively regularly, and haven’t yet thrown them out the window, I say to you: Good job. You’re a good mother. And so am I. Whether or not my son learns to guide his spoon to his mouth anytime soon.
It was my husband’s fault, and started like this: “I’m just trying to teach him something. Come on, he’s the only kid in day care who can’t feed himself and doesn’t talk yet.”
I was supposed to be going out for a run while Ian took Saturday morning duty and fed our 20-month-old his cereal. Instead, I burst into tears as Ian blinked in confusion and our son John banged his spoon on the table.
“What’s wrong?” asked the tired, slightly overworked husband whom I knew had woken up with a headache and was doing his best not to be grumpy.
I just shook my head. There is no possible way to explain to a non-mother the load of guilt that came crashing down with his innocent words. What he heard was a simple statement of fact: John doesn’t yet use a spoon to feed himself, and his words so far are limited to warped versions of “plop,” “cheese,” and “thank you,” with slightly clearer “uh-oh,” “all done,” and “meow.”
What I heard was a repetition of the same thing I hear every time someone sends me a link to one of those damn articles about militant breastfeeders, or stay-at-home moms versus employed moms, or an attack on attachment parenting, or an attack by non-parents on mothers who dare to complain about the stresses of motherhood, or a debate about the merits of reading and Baby Einstein, and when and how to potty-train. What I heard was this: You’re a bad mother. Every choice you make is wrong. You are not doing enough. You’re doing it all in the wrong way. You should be more involved, pay more attention, spend more time, slice off the rest of your identity to devote every iota of yourself to raise the most well-adjusted and intelligent child according to the requirements and schedule we have laid out for you. Either that, or hand him over to caregivers who will do a better job.
Maybe I should blame it on the article I read the day before, in which a writer beat up on mothers who post pictures of their kids as their Facebook profile photo (yes, I’ve done it). She, as so many others have done, lumped me in with a non-existent camp of mothers who are intellectual idiots, socially inept, enamored of their children, and burying our own lives in order to spoil a bunch of cute parasites. Nevermind that I have a degree in mathematics, still do symbolic logic for fun, like to discuss Proust with those who have read him, had a career as a good copy editor, and am a working writer.
It’s not I who defines myself only by my child. It’s you. As long as my intellectual conversations are sometimes spiced with the word “poop,” I am dismissed as a brainless twit. On the other side, as long as my conversations about our children are peppered with the phrase “sometimes I just want to run away,” I’m a selfish beast who doesn’t love my son.
I am sick of it. There are CEOs and politicians getting paid millions, if not billions, to screw up their corporations, screw over the people who depend on them, and screw every last piece of life out of the planet. And all mothers can do is yell at one another for not doing the most difficult, most important, and least-paid job on the planet absolutely perfectly?
My bursting into tears wasn’t my husband’s fault. He’s doing the best he can, and, smart person, does not read all the parenting and Mommy War articles I do. Maybe it’s my fault for reading them at all, one more way I’m screwing up as a woman and a mother.
In the twenty months since my son was born, I’ve learned two things: One, that a mother’s instinct is almost always right. That doesn’t mean her decisions are right. But if she’s in touch with herself, her child, and an inner voice that has nothing to do with have read Dr. Spock and Dr. Sears twenty times, her instincts as to what is best for her child, and what her child’s needs are, are generally going to be on the mark.
The second thing is that society—the media, other mothers, often family, and a lot of people in the community—are going to do everything they can to both drown out that voice, and to convince a mother that her instincts are utterly wrong. In fact, the message is, those instincts will damage your child’s social adaptation, ruin his or her chances of getting into a good college, give him or her asthma, obesity, a complete lack of independence, fear of dogs, an addiction to television and sugar, probably a drug problem, psychological insecurity, and lack of judgment. And they’ll hate vegetables and reading unless you do it all just right.
I would like to say, politely, to all these people, shut up. On both sides. Just. Stop. Yelling. Information and education is essential. Expressing your frustration is necessary so others don’t feel ashamed for feeling the same way. But this is, without a doubt, the hardest job on earth. Any mother out there dealing with guilt or anger or bewilderment or frustration, do you really want to lay any more of that on the shoulders of other mothers?
*****
I have opinions, even strong ones, about many things regarding motherhood. I believe breastfeeding and breast milk have incalculable health benefits that formula can never compete with. But I also know that breastfeeding can also be difficult or impossible. And, having used a hospital-grade pump for a month when my son was in the NICU, I know it feels exactly like being a milked cow and have trouble imagining making time for it during employment, especially with an unsympathetic boss. I also know babies raised on formula who are doing beautifully.
I believe a baby physically needs its mother for the first three months of life, possibly even six. But I also know that, in a society that seems headed on a crash-course of productivity, believing that everyone needs to work until they’re ground into dust, two weeks with your new baby is a blessing. Three months is a priceless gift, and six months an unheard-of treasure. A professional woman who can spend six months devoted to her baby and then go straight back into her career without being sidelined or passed over for promotion? Millions of us envy you handful.
I believe children who don’t go into nature regularly will turn out more anxious and have weaker cognitive reasoning than children who spend less time with toys that beep and more time watching trees and birds. I believe plastic is akin to a slow-acting poison, and that the powder-come-gel in disposable diapers is probably toxic. But I use Pampers; my son has plenty of plastic toys. And I know how hard it can be to get outside each day when there are a million demands on your time.
I believe people who think parenthood is a lifestyle choice akin to picking out a car or switching careers are fools. But I also pity them, because if they don’t believe that parenthood is a community effort, then they don’t believe in a functional society.
I believe that being a mother has added dimension and depth to my life I could never have imagined. But I also believe those who choose not to have children can live and love just as deeply.
So right here, right now, I am declaring war on the Mommy Wars. Or, more to the point, I am declaring a truce on the Mommy Wars within myself and my relationships. I am laying down my weapons. This is the nonviolent revolution, the new motherhood.
If you want information or advice, I will give it without judgment. If you want to talk about the difficulties of motherhood, and the guilt and the fears, I’m in. If you hate yourself for having lost your temper or having lost your identity, I want you to know you’re not alone. If you just want to talk about a good book, and not worry that mentioning poop in passing will scare someone off, I’m with you.
If you give your children love, and food, and change their diapers relatively regularly, and haven’t yet thrown them out the window, I say to you: Good job. You’re a good mother. And so am I. Whether or not my son learns to guide his spoon to his mouth anytime soon.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Selling Ourselves Short
Last week I had what has become an increasingly common conversation for me: child care. The expense of it, the lack of it, the quality of it. The talk followed a predictable pattern with a predictable conclusion. I'm going nuts, as is the mother I was talking with, but neither of us can quite afford full-time day care.
This isn't quite true. My husband and I could afford it if (iff, that is -- "if and only if")I went back to a full-time job. So. I can go back to the task of copy editing increasingly dissatisfying children's textbooks, a job I used to enjoy, but only because it was freelance and part-time and I could write on the side. This would mean doing what millions of other women do every day, getting up early, getting showered and dressed, getting my son up, dressed, fed, with diaper bag packed, ready to leave by 7:30 so we can all race to the day care center and then to our respective jobs.
Maybe it's selfish of me, but I don't think I can face that life. It seems overwhelmingly pointless, harried, and stressful, for my son as well as me. Given the two options, I think I'd rather let him sleep as long as he wants, and spend the day reading him Goodnight Moon a zillion times, making sure we all have nutritious meals, and, during his naptime, trying to squeeze in my dream of making my living as a writer.
That's given only those two options. But truly, like most Mothers with Brains I know, I want both. I want to have quality time with my child, and I want to have time to pursue my own intellectual development and freelance career.
What struck me after this recent conversation was a) the guilt that Mothers with Brains feel over wanting to spend money on child care in order to pursue things that might not necessarily bear financial fruit (although keeping ourselves from going berserk could be argued as a financial benefit), and b) the realization that, in complaining about full-time day care costing $15,000 a year, I and other mothers are selling short our own talents, activities, and value.
Honestly, is that all I'm worth? I read to my son constantly. I take him for walks and make sure he has a strong relationship with nature, ensure he learns to love fresh air and sunshine. I play with him. Not "development activities." Just play, stacking blocks, chasing a ball, whatever he feels like doing. I cook three meals a day that are generally organic, nutritious, often from locally grown produce (sometimes even grown by me), and hopefully super tasty. I keep the house tidy and clean, but not sterile. If my son is sick I nurture him and make chicken soup. I still breastfeed, a health benefit for him that's been calculated to have a value of about $30,000 a year. I take the cats to the vet and the cars to the mechanic. I volunteer time and writing skills to two organizations. I am on call to edit and shape the freelance efforts of various friends working on their writing. I keep the flow of community and family relationships going through letters, emails, and phone calls (I loathe talking on the phone, so really should get extra points for that). I play music for my son, sing to him, and help him play music, too. I try to speak to him in Russian sometimes.
All this is only worth $15,000 a year? You've got to be kidding me. The Salary Survey calculates that a typical stay-at-home mother doing about 10 tasks every week is, in real salary terms, worth $138,095. I'm not saying day care should cost over a hundred grand a year, but it does seem to say something about how little "women's work" is still valued, at least in American society.
And it tells me something about how little I value my own work, both the parenting and the constantly-shoved-aside creative writing, that $15,000 just seems like an insane amount of money. What are we worth? As mothers, as thinkers, as human beings playing roles in an intricate web of communities and social constructs? The answer is -- we're worth more than we think, but nobody's going to hand us free time and intellectual stimulation on a silver platter. We have to learn to ask for it. And to do that, we have to learn to value ourselves.
This isn't quite true. My husband and I could afford it if (iff, that is -- "if and only if")I went back to a full-time job. So. I can go back to the task of copy editing increasingly dissatisfying children's textbooks, a job I used to enjoy, but only because it was freelance and part-time and I could write on the side. This would mean doing what millions of other women do every day, getting up early, getting showered and dressed, getting my son up, dressed, fed, with diaper bag packed, ready to leave by 7:30 so we can all race to the day care center and then to our respective jobs.
Maybe it's selfish of me, but I don't think I can face that life. It seems overwhelmingly pointless, harried, and stressful, for my son as well as me. Given the two options, I think I'd rather let him sleep as long as he wants, and spend the day reading him Goodnight Moon a zillion times, making sure we all have nutritious meals, and, during his naptime, trying to squeeze in my dream of making my living as a writer.
That's given only those two options. But truly, like most Mothers with Brains I know, I want both. I want to have quality time with my child, and I want to have time to pursue my own intellectual development and freelance career.
What struck me after this recent conversation was a) the guilt that Mothers with Brains feel over wanting to spend money on child care in order to pursue things that might not necessarily bear financial fruit (although keeping ourselves from going berserk could be argued as a financial benefit), and b) the realization that, in complaining about full-time day care costing $15,000 a year, I and other mothers are selling short our own talents, activities, and value.
Honestly, is that all I'm worth? I read to my son constantly. I take him for walks and make sure he has a strong relationship with nature, ensure he learns to love fresh air and sunshine. I play with him. Not "development activities." Just play, stacking blocks, chasing a ball, whatever he feels like doing. I cook three meals a day that are generally organic, nutritious, often from locally grown produce (sometimes even grown by me), and hopefully super tasty. I keep the house tidy and clean, but not sterile. If my son is sick I nurture him and make chicken soup. I still breastfeed, a health benefit for him that's been calculated to have a value of about $30,000 a year. I take the cats to the vet and the cars to the mechanic. I volunteer time and writing skills to two organizations. I am on call to edit and shape the freelance efforts of various friends working on their writing. I keep the flow of community and family relationships going through letters, emails, and phone calls (I loathe talking on the phone, so really should get extra points for that). I play music for my son, sing to him, and help him play music, too. I try to speak to him in Russian sometimes.
All this is only worth $15,000 a year? You've got to be kidding me. The Salary Survey calculates that a typical stay-at-home mother doing about 10 tasks every week is, in real salary terms, worth $138,095. I'm not saying day care should cost over a hundred grand a year, but it does seem to say something about how little "women's work" is still valued, at least in American society.
And it tells me something about how little I value my own work, both the parenting and the constantly-shoved-aside creative writing, that $15,000 just seems like an insane amount of money. What are we worth? As mothers, as thinkers, as human beings playing roles in an intricate web of communities and social constructs? The answer is -- we're worth more than we think, but nobody's going to hand us free time and intellectual stimulation on a silver platter. We have to learn to ask for it. And to do that, we have to learn to value ourselves.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
How Much Guilt Can a Mother Take?
I've been having one of those soul-destroying days that makes you want to crawl into bed with a cup of tea and an escapist novel. Or else throw things. Neither of which I can do because in the other room is my lovely boy who's been crying and fussy all day long, and he's been like that for several days running. It's the teeth, I know it's the teeth and they hurt and it's awful but I've just had enough of it. He's in his crib right now, crying and whimpering intermittently, and I feel guilty and horrible for just letting him be there--an evil, rotten mother who cares nothing for children at all, who's waspish and mean and selfish, the mother of nightmares.
How come nobody ever talks about these days? How come nobody ever warns you of them?
I'm not the mother of nightmares. I'm a good mother so far, loving and giving and conscientious most of the time. But I am also so tired. Bone tired. Today is one of those days when motherhood feels like living with an abuser, being buffeted by violence so often that you can only, finally, be still inside and take what comes and look forward to escaping into sleep.
Days like this I just want to run away. I want to be free--to be a person, my own human being, again. Why aren't mothers allowed to admit that more often? That we're tired of our own personhood being taken from us, or taken for granted? I am. This isn't a job you can quit or take a vacation from and it sucks up every particle of energy, every moment of the day.
It feels damned unfair that we're not revered and worshipped and paid zillions of dollars (or euros or pounds) for what we do, like movie stars and professional athletes.
How long can I let him cry before psychological damage sets in? How much guilt can I take?
Not enough. It's been about twenty minutes with little abatement. I know he's exhausted, but his teeth hurt and he will neither eat nor sleep. I don't know what to do except either hold him, rock him for ages and ages, or drop him off at a friend's house and run away forever. I know what sounds more appealing right now.
How can infinite love and something akin to hatred exist so seamlessly, side by side in one person so that you can shift from one to the other in the time it takes to blink?
How come nobody ever talks about these days? How come nobody ever warns you of them?
I'm not the mother of nightmares. I'm a good mother so far, loving and giving and conscientious most of the time. But I am also so tired. Bone tired. Today is one of those days when motherhood feels like living with an abuser, being buffeted by violence so often that you can only, finally, be still inside and take what comes and look forward to escaping into sleep.
Days like this I just want to run away. I want to be free--to be a person, my own human being, again. Why aren't mothers allowed to admit that more often? That we're tired of our own personhood being taken from us, or taken for granted? I am. This isn't a job you can quit or take a vacation from and it sucks up every particle of energy, every moment of the day.
It feels damned unfair that we're not revered and worshipped and paid zillions of dollars (or euros or pounds) for what we do, like movie stars and professional athletes.
How long can I let him cry before psychological damage sets in? How much guilt can I take?
Not enough. It's been about twenty minutes with little abatement. I know he's exhausted, but his teeth hurt and he will neither eat nor sleep. I don't know what to do except either hold him, rock him for ages and ages, or drop him off at a friend's house and run away forever. I know what sounds more appealing right now.
How can infinite love and something akin to hatred exist so seamlessly, side by side in one person so that you can shift from one to the other in the time it takes to blink?
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