Supa’s Activist Corner: MomsRising
OK.
Last bit of motherly righteousness: momsrising.org. Sign a petition and let’s get this party started.
(Phew. Now I’m all mommed out. Time for reality television, or something.)
Mother’s lib (or, Everyone Works)
Just one more tidbit before I go: That whole “Mommy Wars” thing? Where the “working moms” hate the “stay-at-home” moms and vice versa? I knew that was a social construct, a media stand-by for slow news days and attention-grabbing headlines. But the point was brought home recently that something around 70% of mothers do some sort of part-time work, whether it’s one hour a week or one week a year or unpaid labor aside from housewifery or, in my case, 25 hours a week without benefits. Seventy percent! Or something close to that, I’m not looking it up right now!
Aside from the very wealthy (who are sure to have some kind of help, be it maid service or nannies or what have you) most moms, even ones who identify as stay-at-home, do some sort of work. And most working moms are not necessarily doing 50+ hours a week at a high-powered suit job. I could call myself a stay-at-home mom who does some office work, if I wanted to. I choose to call myself a working mom, because that’s what I feel like, and because I have gotten enough fucking grief about putting my child in day care that I am going to take that phrase, “working mom,” and reclaim the hell out of it.
Amalah recently quit her job, and commenters came absolutely out of the woodwork to laud her for making “the right choice” and staying at home. Even though, technically, she’s not a “stay at home-er,” because she’s got one or two free-lance gigs lined up, making her a work-at-homer. But the sheer dichotomy of thought about working, and about the “relief” so many of us dream of when we think about staying at home with our kids versus the stress of having to manage work plus family life — well, it’s all bullshit, don’t you think? Especially when you’re by yourself with virtually no social support network.
Part (OK, all) of what makes working stressful for me is child care. I love my job. I love designing newspapers and I love working in publishing, have done since I was 14. It’s been my life’s dream to be a part of producing a publication intended for mass consumption. But my job does not allow me to work from home, nor does it subsidize child care of any kind. And my mortgage does not allow me to stay home. And my heart will not allow me to raise my child in an apartment or a rowhouse.
So I work. And I pay two hundred and fifteen dollars every week for owen to get four and a half hours of care, four days a week.
But like I said before, if he gets sick — I’m screwed. My neighbors are octogenarians, except for the 40-year-old guy a few houses down who seems to have a drinking problem. No one on the block has young children. No one at my office has young children (that I know of. OK, maybe this one guy. But they’re at least grade-school age). None of my friends are within a five mile radius, and even if they did, they have children and/or jobs as well.
I have virtually no social support network. None.
Which is why we’re moving. Raising a family is certainly survivable this way. We’re not perishing or anything. But the specter of disaster is constantly hovering over my shoulder, and if shit hits the fan, I want to live in a close-knit place with many different kinds of support. I want to know my grocer. I want my son to have kids to play with aside from his day-care buddies. I want to be able to chat with my neighbors about gas prices without them mistaking today for 1961. I want Owen to play out in the backyard without hearing Forty-Year-Old Alcoholic yelling belligerantly about “Fucking Whores and Catholics and Spics.”
The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far, in my 15-month mothering career, is that to expect a person to do this alone is homicidal. I’m dead grateful that I have a job right now, that I have the Internet, that I have a library card. But I keep thinking how much richer my life would be if I had a woman next door with a toddler; if I had my mother in law two streets over to tell me how to launder vomit out of denim; if I had a neighbor girl I trusted wholeheartedly to babysit a few times a month.
The problem, in my opinion, is not working vs non-working, it’s all of us moms together expecting ourselves to do everything “perfectly” and not expecting or demanding society at large to give us a fucking hand already.
Seriously, this book is changing my life
More thoughts on Perfect Madness presented in stream-of-consciousness form, because there are so many thoughts whirling around and because my own mother liked the last entry I wrote on it.
Judith Warner is doing an excellent job not just of pinning down the anxiety of motherhood today, the all-encompassing terror of being responsible for a new life, for the physical and emotional and mental needs of your baby, but also of couching the entire phenomenon in historical and social context. Today’s militant attachment parenting proponents are just as militant as yesterday’s “don’t smother, don’t hover” parenting experts. Ideas on the “right” way to do motherhood have spun a hundred and eighty degrees in the last two generations, from “spare the rod” to “never an unteachable moment.”
I’m sorry that I can’t remember it now, but in the last week I visited a mommyblog that perfectly explained what made me so uncomfortable about attachment parenting: the utter and total sacrifice a mother must make in order to do it correctly. She must give up sleep, and the use of her arms, and any — ANY — time to herself, because a baby must be breastfed (and only breastfed) on demand, never allowed to cry, and must be physically attached to the mother as often as humanly possible. It’s like having a miniature poodle which you must never let bark and whose feet must never touch the ground. Oh, and the poodle has to sleep in the bed with you. Careful, don’t let the poodle fall! Don’t feed the poodle anything non-organic! And you must never, EVER, put the poodle in a crate! Ever! Don’t you know that putting your poodle in a crate is the exact same thing as tossing it underhanded into a Romanian orphanage, never to be seen again?
Because it is.
Well, let me tell you. My own little poodle, Owen, never learned to suck properly. “Nursing” quickly turned into a bloody blistered mess (for me, anyway). I attempted to wear him, but seeing as I had to make my sling out of an old bedsheet, it didn’t quite work correctly. Attempting to sleep with him in the same bed was a perfect way to make sure I went through the night sleeping fifteen minutes at a time. I think that’s what they do to people at Git-mo, force them to co-sleep with leggy four-month-olds — the deprivation on top of the scratches would certainly convince me to confess to crimes I didn’t commit.
Mothers today are expect to adhere to a strict regime of self-sacrifice, lest they risk being labeled “unfit.” Think back to dooce’s “sleep-training” post and the number of trolls who equated an infant sleeping on his own in a crib to child abuse. A mother who would let her baby cry for even a second is, in the cultural mind, guilty of cruelty and neglect.
These are the types of dogmatic thinking that today are considered “normal.” It’s normal to never have time for yourself. It’s normal to think that staying home with your child and being on duty for him around the mother-effing clock is best. It’s normal to think that anything you may want, or need, or feel inclined to do is automatically wrong and bad unless it’s specifically intended to be in your child’s best interest.
Therefore: Working: Wrong. Shopping: Wrong, unless done for organic produce which you will later mash and stew into homemade baby food. Working out: Wrong, because why work out if you have a toddler? That should be exercise enough, right? Reading a book, working on a quilt, doing sudoku puzzles — unless these are done while the child is napping (and AFTER the laundry/dishes/vacuuming/housekeeping/errands have been done).
Today I deliberately set out to do whatever I felt like doing. With Iain’s cooperation, I woke up late (10 a.m., bitches). I talked to my mother long-distance for 100 minutes (thanks, new Verizon long-distance plan!). I welcomed my friend Rachel and her dog to the house, and I convinced Owen to take a three-hour nap. I’m not really sure how that last one happened — just luck, I guess, but what luck it was!
I read my book while Owen played. I brought him and Iain to the The Book Thing and got some more books. I looked through the fabric scraps Rachel brought over as Owen watched TV.
Basically, I told myself I wasn’t going to feel guilty about anything — not even feeding Owen coffee cake for breakfast.
You know what? Today was a really good day. Even when Owen knocked over my soda, sending Pepsi skimming far and wide over the coffee table and dripping onto the carpet, I didn’t care. I just stuck him in his playpen and mopped it up. I didn’t see it as a failure to parent correctly, as evidence that I’m the most horrible, undeserving person in the world. I just thanked my lucky stars that all our furniture is second- and third-hand and that Stanley Steemer will one future day make a house call.
I was calm. I was happy. I was very thankful that Iain is such a hands-on Dad, but I refused to let myself feel guilty over “making him” watch the baby. Know what? It’s his baby, too.
I’ve dog-eared about twenty more pages, each having a particularly soul-stopping passage that I want to highlight and share and put in blockquote tags right here. But instead I’m just going to read some more and let the whole thing marinate in my brain a little longer.
More theme changing!
I change them as often as I change my socks, it’s been said.
Was talking with Neil and realized that, cool as the previous theme was, it was difficult for some people to use. So here we are at drunkey love. Note how you can toggle the insanely ass-long lists of archives and other things with the wee buttons to the right. That’s pretty cool.
Things need tweaking but you know what? Now I’m going to bed. For real. I mean it this time.
Addendum: If you’re looking for cool WP themes, Paige has her finger on that pulse, or try Ma.gnolia with the tags ‘wordpress theme’.
Chronic underachiever
OK. I know it’s a library book. But I’ve already dog-eared seven crucial pages in Perfect Madness and I’m only on chapter two.
I have so much to say about it already but it’s very late and I’m very tired because, well, you know. My toddler woke me up at 6:45 a.m. and like a good mother I had to retrieve him immediately, lest he cry and feel sad. And then I spent an hour trying to find him something he would deign to eat for breakfast, and then I had to rack my brain to pack him a varied and high-fat yet nutritious lunch, because he is now at the 25th percentile for weight rather than the 50th and that just will not do. And then I took a shower, during which the phone rang AND the test of the emergency broadcast system came on the TV I left on to occupy Owen, causing me to A. be reminded that only bad mothers use TV as a babysitter and B. think that we were in the midst of another attack on America and maybe that was Iain calling to say the town had exploded and here I am, shaving my legs like a sucker. After that I entertained Owen while getting myself dressed (no easy feat, I assure you) and poured my second cup of coffee, which was going to have to stand in for breakfast again (too busy to eat! no time!). I packed up his bag for school and my bag for work and found shoes for the both of us and locked up all the doors and turned off all the lights and swayed, laden, out to the car.
Fortunately WTMD was playing that new Paul Simon song, “Outrageous,” because it cheered me up.
Then it was off to daycare to drop the little muffin off in a room of screaming babies, trying to explain to one of his teachers that if he continues to make lewd tongue motions at her it’s not because he’s been watching too much of the WB, it’s because that is the sign for “frog,” and he is very very smart. Also, he can say “cheese,” only it sounds like “sheeez.”
Then zippity-doo to the parking garage to find a spot; walk two blocks to the office; catch up on e-mail, have a planning meeting, do my day’s worth of work, and drive home to be on time for dinner at 6, which I cooked, because Iain was very tired. He cleaned up and I dressed Owen for bed and found his favorite book about pooping called Everyone Poops, which, it’s true, everyone does. Stories and cuddles and plop him into bed, standing over his crib, holding his hand so his little baby feelings aren’t hurt if I let him go. But my leg starts to hurt and the crib rail is pinching a nerve on my arm so I let go anyway, off to the armchair, to put in a few quality hours of freelance web design, before the night totally gets away from me.
Then, yawning, at 10, I brush my teeth and get in bed with “Perfect Madness” and realize, Holy Fucking Living Jesus, you mean there’s an easier way? I thought I WAS doing it the easy way!
One big fat reason why we’re moving to Pittsburgh: In-laws. Family in town. Some sort of motherfucking support system. Because if Iain goes down? If the day care is closed? If Owen, God forbid, gets sick on a work day? I am fucked. Eff you see kay fucked.
Not only is that just not right, but dammit, a girl likes to take a nap every once in a while, maybe read her book while the sun is still shining, you know?
Join a Supa Book Club!
Hi, Supa Friends:
I was talking to my pal Rachael, a former Baltimore blogger, this evening, and she had a very good idea: a little book club!
Whattya say? JG? HVM? TBGR? D? MV? JXKA? Anybody whose initials I haven’t guessed or made up?
Totally cas’, possibly (probably?) at my house, once a month, weekend or weeknight, food and drinks, that sort of thing. Small. Informal. We could rotate locations if that sounds like a good idea. I’ve never done a book club before, even though it sounds like the A-1 perfectest social occasion for an anxious nerd like me.
Also, my craft circle never exactly got off the ground, I know, but this is different. This is not occurring right before Baby’s First Christmas. (Yes, October counts as “right before,” shut up.)
UPDATE: Join the forum!
Thanks for a good idea, Rachael!
Be satisfied. Be a simple kind of girl.
OK. I really do want to move out of here. But there are times when I love this little white-trash neighborhood so much.
I mean, aside from the gunshots and the sirens and the “Buddy, spare a dime?” and the 40-year-old spandex-wearing domestic-disturbance-causing person knocking on our door, bloodied, asking to use the phone.
I mean, ASIDE from that, it can be kind of OK. Like right now. In the yard cattycorner from us, someone’s got a barrel fire going, snap-crackle-pop, and they are playing SKYNNYRD. I am out on my back deck, smoking, thoroughly enjoying this — or at least what of it I can hear over the muffler-less Pontiacs driving by .
Over my dead body
I sense change a-comin’, and yo, I am resistant.
My LORD, you guys. Debbie makes a good point about the bubble skirts and the gauchos (my take: hate and hate), but you guys? JELLY SHOES. And LEGGINGS. Hello, 1986, nice to see you again!
PSYCH! *fakes you out, runs hand through hair*
Soon even my trusty dark denim bootcut Mom Jeans will be laughable and what then? WHAT THEN?
On Balance
I’ve been reading Mommy Wars: Stay-at-home Moms and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. It’s fascinating. And I am always starved for stories of other women who work outside the home, how they do it, how they feel about it.
A small passage at the end of the essay by Jane Juska, on page 313, made me choke up and put the whole fucking issue into crystal clear perspective:
Let me save you some money: In a life with children, balance does not exist. Once you’re a parent, you can figure you’ll be out of whack for the rest of your life. … Children are not born to provide balance. Children are made to stir us up, to teach us how angry we can get, how scared we can be, how utterly happy, happier than we’d ever imagined was possible, how deeply we can live. Children turn us upside down and inside out; they send us to the depths and heights of ourselves; but they do not balances us. We can’t balance them, either, and a good thing, too. They’re finding out hwo to live in this world, and the most we can do is make them as safe as possible and have a good time with them.
She goes on to say:
I am in favor of choosing, consciously, to have a good time with kids. You can do this whether you work full-time, part-time or overtime. Peekaboo, in all its infinite variations, will see you through three good years at least …
There’s a lot of intellectual debate in this book, a lot of this-is-my-story, and it’s all very good, very interesting. But this was the passage that made me say Yes. Fuck balance, this is Life.
Y’all missed out
… If you didn’t make it to the Towson Library’s book sale this weekend. We got a stack of books 15 inches high for two-fitty. Two dolla! Fitty cent! Dozen books!
Word to your moms: Portions of these quality remainders are headed for The Book Thing, or so we overhear. And at ten minutes to close on the last day of the sale — today — there was an awful lot of good stuff left.
Thanks be to Snay, who gave us another bookcase, because we’re about to fill it up.
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