On the upside of the U curve

I haven't posted here since, it seems, 2009, although I wrote several unpublished posts in the interim. I have reached the age where news of death outnumbers news of births and marriages, and some of that has touched me deeply. My father died in 2012 after a brief war on lung cancer, and I lost my pseudo-brother suddenly and inexplicably last fall. The silver lining for the latter -- and I fight desperately every day to find one -- has been a strengthening of my relationship with his sister, my "pseudo-sister", who now finds herself an only child like me.

Despite these huge events, I find myself embarking on the upswing of the U curve cited by research on happiness among adults. Happiness, however they define it, reaches its nadir in the 40s, then begins an upward trend. One can't help correlating the curve with the age of offspring, with the nadir coinciding with the kids' teen years. Ok, I can't help it.

My life is more orderly now with two kids in college and the third in high school. The youngster is determined to give me a run for my money, but he's also very sweet, teetering on the fence between the little boy who still needs me and the capable young man who doesn't want to. They are all right where they should be, with all the angst that comes along for that ride.

Now my husband and I begin to become ourselves again. A grain of our youth remains, but we lack the physical energy to do all the things we imagine. We have purchased that large piece of land that we plan to leave alone as a refuge for ourselves as well as for wildlife. We can't wait to live there, but there is much to be done first, so it is an exercise in patience. But it has given us a new project, something to look forward to.

But it has also made it unbearably clear just how much -- or how little -- our children are still engaged in our lives. Our son is beyond excited about this property, full of plans and ideas, ready to spend every summer day there. Our oldest is too busy living her life to even visit very much; while she is living at home, she spends her time with her boyfriend and her friends, assembling her tribe. Our middle daughter is struggling with belonging somewhere; life isn't the same as it was in high school, so she's grieving a loss that none of us can quite put a finger on. As always, each of our children has had a very different reaction to this change: one highly positive, one negative (well, a don't care, really), and one in between. As it has always been, for everything.

What surprises me is how sanguine we all are about moving out of the house in which we have lived for almost 25 years. We spent our honeymoon there; the kids have grown up there; we have laughed and cried there. We are thoroughly done with it and ready to move on to our new adventure. I wonder if that will still be the case when the time comes to hand over the keys to another family.

Opting out.... and going back

I've written here in the past about my choice to opt out of my career. I spent five years as a full-time mom, but I wasn't happy. In July 2007, right around the time I stopped writing new posts, I went back to work.

I was cautious at first. I went back only part time working about half the day. I liked it, though, liked using my brain, being rewarded -- even praised -- for it. Praise! I hadn't heard that in far too long!

I worked part time doing a full-time job for about 19 months, underpaid but enjoying most of the work. Then I was hired "for real" to do the job I'd been doing for so long. I'm still underpaid, but not as heinously as I was before. I was able to negotiate a full-time position with benefits that still gets me home by 3:00 most days.

So I'm back in my career, sort of, but with a very different attitude, and still not sure it's right for us. It's good to have the extra income -- we now have college funds for all the kids -- but it's taking its toll on me and the family in ways I didn't anticipate.

First, the good things: the kids have a lot more time with their Papa, and he bears a lot more responsibility for household chores than he used to. He gets the kids out the door in the morning and, with his flexible-hours, work-from-home-once-a-week job, he deals with a lot of the doctor appointments and daytime tasks now.

I have the psychological independence that my own paycheck brings, feeling less guilty when I buy a pair of shoes or write the check for the summer camp that the kids completely adore but that Papa thinks is too expensive. I also have the satisfaction of being good at my job most of the time and being recognized for it.

The kids have the positive influence of seeing me do something that isn't in service to them, which is a very good thing. They come to work with me sometimes, so they know what I do, and I think it's good for them to see that, while they come first for me, I have responsibilities to other people that have to enter the equation.

Now for the less positive: time. I just can't seem to get everything done, and I crave solitude. I work in a cubicle in a busy, social office that is never quiet. I go home to a noisy, busy household that is happy and boisterous, which is wonderful, but the only divide is the car ride home. Before I went back to work, I spent time writing, playing the piano, singing, walking, reading, podcasting... the list goes on. I have had to drop all of those creative things that made me feel alive and learning.

I am learning, though. This job stretches me in ways I didn't know existed, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. While it's a technical job, it's also financial and managerial, which is fairly new territory for me. I don't like managing, but it gives me the freedom to work on exciting technology that I might not have if my work were more closely directed by my immediate supervisor. It allows me to channel my creativity in ways that aid the business, but because of my inexperience, sometimes those projects go awry and I pay the price. It's stressful, but when things go right it can be exhilarating.

I miss the hours I spent each day just contemplating the larger questions of life, but I enjoy the sense of purpose I feel now. It's harder now to keep the volunteer commitments I made when I was unemployed, but service to the community is important to me, so I do my best.

The hardest thing for me to accept is the very real limitations I now have on my career. The unavoidable fact of it is, I chose to put my career on hold for five years, and I can't get that time back. I'll never make as much money as I would have if I hadn't opted out, nor will I get the flexibility -- you usually have to prove yourself by working regular 8-5 hours for a while before you can get that. My job prospects just aren't as wide open as they were because I feel so strongly that I need to be home for my kids after school. I hate the fact that my DH makes twice what I make and has much more flexibility with the same level of education and experience (except that, while my degree is in the field he works in, his is not). It's very hard to reconcile the choices I made with the consequences, which seem to be more far-reaching than I anticipated.

I wish it weren't necessary for women to make these hard choices and then be criticized by *someone* no matter which option we choose. The hardest criticism, though, comes from ourselves. We know we can't be perfect, but we also know that the generations before us fought for us to have the right to choose how to spend our time, so we feel an obligation to make that fight worthwhile. Perhaps our daughters are growing up in an atmosphere where that struggle isn't something to feel guilty or grateful about, but where the results of it are simply a given. Where they really can choose a career in industry or in the home or somewhere in the middle and be respected either way. That doesn't mean forget the struggle, but acknowledge it and get on with their lives. I hope that is my legacy to my daughters.

Options

It's been a long time, and much has happened...

I've gone from being a tired, frustrated, angry stay-at-home-mom to a tired, frustrated, angry working mom.

Why the transformation? One word: options. Despite all the articles I read about professional women who took the career off-ramp to raise their children for a while, I saw my meaningfulness (is that a word? It looks to me like one of those German words that's just other words all pushed together, like gutenmorgenfahrvergnugen or something) dwindle to nothing. My children are growing up before my eyes, and pretty soon I'll be one of those fat, middle-aged meek mothers you see sitting quietly at graduation with a wistful smile, hands folded, hiding the desperate panic that grips her as she realizes that her entire reason for living is about to embark on the life she envisioned for herself all those years ago. That's right before her husband announces that he's flying to Bermuda with his administrative assistant for a "conference", if you know what I mean...

I started working part time last summer, a little over half a day, so I was home for my kids in the afternoons, and they got to spend the whole morning with their grandma, who needed to be needed. Win-win-win, right? For a while, yes. Then, in the fall, I expanded my hours a bit. I'm still home when my kids get home from school, but I leave before they get up in the morning, so their father gets them off to school. Another good thing: kids get more quality time with Dad, and Dad gets to participate more in the whole child-rearing thing. I never enjoyed the morning routine, so I don't really miss it.

But now the honeymoon is over. The job got harder when colleagues left and I had to do their work. I find it harder to get home on time, and to get the housework done in the time left. All the family teamwork that worked so well in the fall has fallen by the wayside, and the kids are back to spending hours buried in books while Mom does all the laundry and nags them to clean their rooms. Dad is resentful because Mom is more tired than before, Mom is angry because the house is a disaster and no one's doing anything about it, and the kids are either oblivious or in open rebellion.

How do people do it?? I am at a complete loss as to how the general public handles this dual-income thing without having a complete meltdown at least once a month. I visit the homes of families where both partners work, and they're uncluttered and spotless. I don't know how to do that without actually moving out of my house. I spend all my free time driving the kids to various activities, hammering away at the endless mountain of laundry, and paying bills. My husband handles most of the grocery shopping and cooking, and no one does the cleaning. It's a miracle that my son gets a bath every now and then.

Do I have to make a choice between having a job and having leisure activities now? Is that the secret?

I keep hearing about happiness studies that show a U-shaped curve, with the nadir of happiness occurring in the 40s. That's around the same time that most people are raising teenagers and tweens, working hard to keep their jobs in a questionable economy, and often taking care of their aging, ailing parents. Gosh, I can't imagine why we'd be unhappy dealing with those things. Do we really need a study for this? The one good thing about it is knowing that it will probably get better. If we're able to keep our jobs. And if there is affordable (universal? please?) health care when we reach retirement age. And if our children don't go off the rails and become drug addicts or homicidal maniacs or, worse, victims of a DUI on their seventeenth birthday. (My nightmares are vivid, count on that).

I need options. The means to send my kids to college no matter how much it costs. The wherewithal to go it on my own if my husband and I just can't stand each other anymore. The money to buy a piece of land in the middle of nowhere that I can leave alone and go visit when the planet just refuses to slow down.

Women so wanted these options, for so long. But now that we have them, how do we handle the family demands that haven't gone away, that aren't yet shared equally between the partners? I can handle the job, it's the parenting and housekeeping that I'm having trouble with. Amidst all of it, I'm trying to hold onto the person I was before all this started. I never knew it would be this hard just to stay me.

Greatness in the face of mundanity...

I read somewhere today that Einstein used to sit in a chair with his keys in his hand and let his mind wander. His keys would eventually fall out of his hand and wake him from his reverie.

This sounds positively luxurious to me. To sit in a chair and have no one bother me long enough for my keys to fall from my completely relaxed hand -- how many of us have that opportunity?

From the moment I rise in the morning until I fall into bed at night, my time is taken up with mundane things, laundry and cooking chief among them. I often wonder what I might accomplish if I were freed from such things, if I knew that someone else would take on their responsibility. Certainly the education I pursued with such alacrity was intended for intellectual pursuits, not just the logistics of handling simultaneous homework supervision, music instruction, and dinner preparation at the end of each day.

Tillie Olsen drew attention to this problem in the lives of women. She lived it, and she wrote about it. She herself had to fit her writing into the interstices of her family and work life, not to mention her political activism. How much more might she have published if she had not had such demands on her time? Would she have traded her large family for more time for contemplation?

If Einstein had had to take care of daily housekeeping, would we now have a theory of relativity? I doubt it. When one's mind is filled with the minutiae of child-rearing and housekeeping, there isn't much room left for higher thought. It's hard to switch gears from the goal-oriented list-making concrete stuff of daily life to the process-oriented, loosy-goosey wafty contemplation necessary for great leaps in modern thought.

And how does one justify it? Someone looking at my life right now would see me as a housewife and mother, nothing more. The cleanliness of my house and the behavior of my children are the yardsticks by which my life is measured by others. My messy house might be vindicated by the publication of a novel or even an essay, but I must first find the time to write the damn thing. It seems I can only justify quiet, contemplative time to myself if I sacrifice sleep to do it, and that has repercussions that affect all of us, especially as I get older. If I take it any other time, I feel like I'm cheating, like my time would be better used in the service of my family, washing their clothes, cooking their meals, managing their lives. It feels selfish on so many levels.

But that isn't fair! Did Einstein feel selfish or guilty about sitting in a chair, letting his keys fall? Of course not! What does it take to get to the point where sitting and thinking doesn't feel like cheating? Does one have to publish a certain number of articles or novels to find that feeling? Or is it more innate than that? Is it, as I suspect, somewhat related to gender?

There is a classic Dilbert strip that begins with Alice the "brittle engineer" working at her desk, skipping lunch yet again because she has too much to do. She goes looking for Dilbert and finds him in the cafeteria with Wally and the other guys, eating lunch, and she blows up at them. "How can you sit here and eat lunch when there's so much to do?" she says (or something to that effect). "Um... we were hungry?" is the reply. That, my friend(s), is the nub of it right there.

When I was first married, my husband and I went about the usual task of divvying up the household chores. We moved into a fairly large house with a yard, and it was our first foray into homeownership -- even more so for my husband, who had lived only in apartments his whole life. It soon became clear that, regardless of our agreed-upon splits, my husband would do only as much as he felt able to do without giving up any of the activities he had done as a bachelor apartment-dweller. He felt no guilt about things that were left undone and could not for the life of him understand why I insisted on doing so much work around the house. Nothing got in the way of his afternoon nap, while I spent hours doing yard work. When I complained about all the work that had to be done, he would just tell me not to do it. Not that he would do it, mind you, just that I should leave it undone. This infuriated me.

Someone has to take responsibility for the day-to-day operation of life. That's the key word: responsibility. My husband knew that he could abdicate responsibility for the house because I was so gung-ho about it. This happened in my work life as well: my male colleagues, like Dilbert and company, would go off to lunch while my female colleague and I would work through lunch because we felt there was so much to do. Clearly, the women on the team felt an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for the work that had to be done, and the men took advantage of that, consciously or not. It's a recurring pattern in the world as I see it, and I wonder how much of it is nurture and how much is nature.

Do we teach boys that they don't have to take responsibility for their domestic environment? Or is it broader than that? Are boys somehow learning that someone else will cover for them? I wonder if this is something we're doing overtly, or unconsciously. Women don't get rewarded for this behavior (except perhaps with sisterhood and shared eye-rolling), so why do we keep doing it? It must have to do with biology: women are evolutionally (?) wired to keep family life humming along while the men go off and please themselves, going forth and multiplying, as it were. Is that too simplistic? Is it a sociological rather than biological phenomenon? I can't separate the two. Perhaps it's just a matter of seeing the big picture. Men just seem innately more capable of selfishness than women, speaking generally, anecdotally, and with absolutely no scientific facts to back it up.

In any event, it seems to me that accomplishing something great in the world of letters or science or just about anything contemplative requires some level of abdication of responsibility for everyday minutiae. If you're coordinating carpool while you're putting dinner on the table, answering homework questions in between, you're not coming up with profound ideas. Someone has to keep life running, but these days it is still an inordinate number of women doing it. We need to let it go, and men need to pick up the slack. That means equal senses of responsibility, which may require some evolution in both sexes.

Bad mom, or strong children?

Today we had a high of about 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The day started at about 4 degrees and didn't rise much from there. The school district had a two-hour delay this morning -- all of the area school districts did.

So the afternoon came, and it was time for my two daughters to come home on the bus. Our bus stop is a fair distance from our house -- around the corner and up a hill. I was home trying futilely to get a fire to burn in our wood stove so the house would be warm when they got home. I contemplated taking the car to the bus stop and giving them a ride home. I'm generally opposed to that, what with global warming and gasoline prices; I seldom drive to the bus stop unless we have to leave directly from there to make an appointment. But today, I considered making an exception.

But then I thought about the woman, some 15-20 years my senior, talking this morning at the bus stop about how she had to walk to school in weather like this (uphill and barefoot, no doubt -- but no, she wasn't being mean-spirited about it). And I wondered, does it do my daughters a disservice to coddle them like that? They were warmly dressed, with gloves and brand-new winter coats. And the eldest will soon be in middle school, which means she needs some modicum of independence and self-reliance. So, I decided to stay home and let them walk home, for better or for worse. It was slightly warmer than it had been in the morning, anyway.

Then they arrive home, and I find out that my neighbor, who lives two doors from the bus stop, gave them a ride home. Now, not only have they not learned self-reliance, but my neighbor thinks I'm a putz. This neighbor is a lovely person, and she's been through a lot in her life and she has a lot of strength as a result. But she is a self-described "smother-mother", who keeps her children quite close. Her children are a couple of years younger than mine, and she lost one -- her first -- in infancy, so it's understandable, to a point. But I do think my kids need to have a certain level of independence at this age, and I think the general tendency is to overprotect because of horror stories we hear about in the local news.

I don't want to succumb to the temptation to keep my children wrapped in cotton wool. I had an overprotective mother, and I paid a price for that. I once heard parenting described as a series of decisions. When the child is young, the parent makes all of the decisions. As the child matures, the decision-making is passed from parent to child gradually, until, at adulthood, the child makes them all. Right now, I think walking home from the bus stop is something they can handle. They know about stranger danger, they take karate classes, and, in any case, our neighborhood is safe as far as I know. If I can't handle them walking home from the bus stop, how will I handle them going out with friends in late middle school, or, God help me, dating?

Am I letting too much go, too soon? I don't think so. Ultimately, I have to follow my gut, and my gut says they can handle it. The rules have been spelled out clearly: come straight home (or call from the neighbors if they plan to stay), take the short cut through the neighbor's yard, don't talk to anyone they don't know, stay together and look out for each other. They're good, obedient but smart kids who won't abuse the privilege, and they like walking home on their own.

I'll change my policy next year, when my eldest starts middle school and comes home an hour earlier, and my little boy starts first grade. I'll be at the elementary bus stop every day, and I'll meet the middle school bus, too, at least at first. There may come a time when my eldest can meet the younger ones at the bus while I wait at home, but it will only happen when my gut says it can happen.

The "Good Mother" Myth

There's something I struggle with from time to time. It flares up without warning, when I've done one too many mountains of laundry or washed one dish too many.

It's the "Good Mother" illusion. Since I don't have a paying job (and that rankles, in case you haven't read my earlier posts), I give it more focus than others might, maybe even more than it's due. Because I have chosen to stay home with my children, it is assumed in society at large that I want to spend all my time in the service of children in general. I am often asked to volunteer my time at my Quaker meeting and at school, usually in some capacity that involves working with children.

I don't mind volunteering -- these organizations survive because of the work done by very generous volunteers, and I try to do my part. But the fact is, other people's children scare me a little, unless they're little and I can just act goofy. I also can't take crowds or loud noise for very long, which can sometimes make school activities horrific for me. The truth is, I spend so much time with my own kids that I really need not to be expected to help with other kids. I never babysat as a kid, never spent time with younger children, and I was an only child. When my eldest was born, we had to ask the hospital nurse to show us how to change her diaper and bathe her, because we had no clue whatsoever. We did fine, but this illustrates my point: this sort of thing does not come naturally to me.

The thing that dogs me, though, is, what makes someone a good mother? And I do mean mother, because the requirements are completely different for a father, whether he stays home or not. Fathers get huge credit just for showing up, let alone doing housework or staying home with the kids. Mothers, though, have to work for every shred of positive feedback. My mother-in-law, for instance, considers herself a good mother because she has sacrificed everything for her children. Some of her children, however, hesitate to agree, citing favoritism and an absence of discipline in their childhood. The bottom line now, though, is that she has very little in her life. Her health isn't good because, while she prepared good food for her family all her life, she didn't eat any of it so they could have more. She has few outside interests because most of her life was taken up with the raising of children, and she fully expected to raise her grandchildren as well (which is part of her culture). She didn't plan to come to this country, or to have daughters-in-law who didn't share her views of child-rearing. The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein's book about a tree that sacrifices all for the little boy it loves, leaves me bawling uncontrollably -- I'm sitting here crying just thinking about it -- but angry at the arrogance and disregard of the little boy, who takes everything so unthinkingly, and angry at the tree for letting him.

What I struggle with is the determination not to make such huge sacrifices. I've been exercising my "no" reflex this school year, guarding my free time jealously in order to make time to write this blog and other things, to read, to take walks, to ride my bike, to sing, to play the piano. Does this make me less of a "good mother"? I am not willing to subjugate myself, and I have to fight it every day. My son wants me to substitute in his school, like I used to. It's his last year there, and I'm tempted just for that reason. But, even if it were guaranteed that I would work only in his classroom, I just don't enjoy it enough. I love to spend time with him, to have playdates with his friends, but I don't feel the need to spend the whole day with thirty preschoolers, no matter how well-behaved they are (and they are, very).

Am I being cruel to my son? Selfish? There are many other parents who choose to work long hours and send their children to day care (I'm not talking about the parents who have to work just to make ends meet). They're certainly not volunteering in the classroom, nor does anyone expect them to. I get resentful of all the tidying up I have to do, and the assumption by everyone in the family, including my husband, that it's not a big deal because I have more time to do it in, even though it's not my mess. I'm stressed out because I feel like I bear the responsibility of household upkeep, but without a modicum of respect or appreciation for what I do. If I manage to do more, all I get is higher expectations. Lately, I say "no" to things just because I don't want to set a precedent.

So, is this just mid-life selfishness? Realism? Some sort of feminism? I have three children, and, to be honest, I find it exhausting to meet all their needs. I do the best I can, but there is seldom a time when a child says, "Okay, Mom, that's all I need. Why don't you go read a book for a while?"

I didn't used to feel this way. I was thrilled to be a SAHM, happy to be more available to my kids than my mother was to me. This year, though, is the first year that all of my kids have been in school all day. I have rediscovered my own interests and likes, and I begin to resent it when I must be pulled away from them to do mommy duty, which is relentless and underappreciated. Then I feel guilty for feeling resentful and anxious because I haven't spent my time doing housework, which desperately needs to be done.

It reminds me of my sysadmin job, where I had a customer base that had to be taken care of before I could do interesting projects. That was fine until performance review, when I was compared unfavorably to people who didn't have customers to satisfy. My support work was considered baseline, and I was judged by the work I did above and beyond that, against people who had nothing else to do but interesting projects. I couldn't win, but I could escape, and that's what I did. That's not an option here. Even if I get a job, the housework and parenting still has to be done.

So, the "Good Mother". Is she a myth? Is she a relative concept, different for each person and each point of view? Is it possible to be objective about such a thing? Our mothers are so intricately woven into our identities that I wonder if it's possible not to compare. Are the criteria different in the first person ("I am a good mother") as opposed to the third person ("She is a good mother")?

The Mommy Box

Bitch Ph.D. wrote yesterday about "opting out". This topic is near and dear to my heart, as you can see in my earlier posts.

I opted out four years ago, closing my reasonably successful part-time consulting business after six years. I was tired, literally and figuratively, of having my work treated like a hobby by my family except when payday came along. I felt like I wasn't doing anything really well. Everything I did was mediocre because I was spread too thin.

The irony is that I never planned to get married, let alone have children. Children used to scare me -- they still do sometimes unless they're mine -- and I couldn't imagine my only-child set-in-my-ways self living with anyone else. If I married at all, I was going to make sure it was to someone who was willing to do the cleaning and cooking -- especially the cooking. I was going to be a career woman, period.

But then reality set in. I worked in the computer industry for eight years, during which I saw just how incompetent and unfair management could be, how they rewarded political bullshit and ignored good work. I enjoyed my work, but I didn't enjoy the environment. In a word, I was disillusioned. At the same time, I was tired of living alone, and I was dating my best friend. We got married and bought our dream house. I kept my lousy job and finished my masters degree on the company's dime.

Four years into the marriage, I started a consulting business. I worked at a university for a while, which I loved, but which was an hour commute each way. Again, I loved the work, this time I enjoyed the environment very much, but the commute was more than I could handle. And I didn't want to move closer to the city. Plus, I was pregnant and determined not to put my child in day care.

What I didn't realize was how hard it would be to be true to myself and available to my family at the same time. I thought my husband would back me up on my career as he had before we had children, but alarm bells should have gone off when his reaction to my proposed business was, "I don't think you can do it." Once we had children, he put me in the "mommy box", where my role was to care for the children, clean the house, and pay attention to him, the primary breadwinner, then maybe get some work done in my "spare time". He thought my work time was leisure time for me, and that I could keep the business running by working an hour a day.

Now, I saw in the comments to Dr. B.'s post that one should avoid marrying someone who isn't supportive. I'm not so sure it's that easy. My husband supported my career and my musical hobbies until we had children. Then he expected me to give up everything in favor of parenting, an attitude that completely blindsided me. When I first joined my choir, there was another member of my section who missed rehearsals a lot because, as everyone knew, her husband resented her time away from the family. I remember thinking to my unmarried self, how could you marry someone like that, someone who doesn't support something that's so important to you? Well, I found out. Seven years later, I found myself in the exact same position, on the receiving end of lectures on how much time I spent singing, away from the family, from the man who never missed a concert before we were married.

Marriage is can be a bait and switch. I married someone who was fundamentally the right one for me, but who had some cultural ideas that neither of us fully understood at the time. He is from an Asian third-world country, and no matter how much he protested that he wasn't "like that", he still had some very traditional ideas of motherhood, ideas that were exacerbated when his mother moved in with us after we had our second child. It's taken us almost a decade to work through all that, and we're in a good place now in our relationship, but my career is kaput.

I wonder how things might be now if I hadn't closed the business. He supports me now in pretty much anything I choose to do (as long as I'm not away too much in the evenings), and I feel lucky to have the opportunity to reinvent myself. We've both compromised, but I feel like I've sacrificed more in the process. He feels the pressure of being the only breadwinner, and that's fine with me. He chose to put me in the mommy box, and, even though now he realizes that he was wrong, the consequence of that is that I no longer have a viable career.

Yes, I could revive my career, and I dilettantishly look for work that would allow me to be here when the kids get home from school. But I have a rare chance now to change who I am, to pursue the creative things that I never did before because I was so conditioned to always have a job with health benefits. Do I worry about being financially dependent? Sure. That's why I still look at the job listings. But I know that, if something were to happen to my husband and/or his career, I would be able to find some sort of work. I wouldn't be as picky, and I wouldn't feel as strongly about flexibility if I had to keep food on the table. I would survive, and so would my family.

The New Suburban Family

I worked on the directory for my daughters' elementary school this year.

I have to admit, it wasn't pure altruism. I'm kinda nosy. I was interested to see the children's family arrangements.

The older the children got, the more creative their family arrangements were. In my database, I had given room for two parents with separate addresses, phone numbers (two each) and email addresses (also two each, though that might be overkill -- most people aren't geeks like us). Reality still managed to push the envelope, though. There were some families with a remarried mother (hence a stepfather also listed) plus a father, or vice versa. There was one family that had two children, but one of them -- only one -- had a different father to be listed. One family had a mother and grandparents. Still another listing was for a boy whose legal last name was X, but whose mother had remarried and adamantly wanted him listed under her new husband's name, Y. He got listed as John (X) Y. The most heartbreaking one was for two young girls whose single-parent mother had passed away over the summer after a long cancer fight. They now live with their grandparents in their mother's house.

I can understand how these situations come about. I've been married for umpteen years, and, when you start out, you really, truly believe that you are the happiest people in the world and nothing could ever happen to ruin it. You have children confident in the secure, bright future you'll provide for them. Then your spouse dies, or one of you must battle depression, or someone has an affair or loses a job. Suddenly life is upside-down, and your children are watching how you react. Sometimes you can rise to the occasion, but sometimes you're a human being who's just doing the best she can. That's true no matter what stage of life you're in.

I talked to some of these parents when I called to clarify information or to ask them to proofread. Some clearly had amicable relationships with their exes, some showed quiet exasperation, some were openly hostile. But some seemed a bit lost, wanting to be involved in their children's lives but feeling like they were behind a barrier erected by the custodial parent, someone they loved once, and who loved them.

I'm one of the lucky ones. We're still together, our children are pretty well-adjusted, my husband's job is secure for now. But reading that directory made it crystal clear that all that could change in an instant. This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. I second-guess my decision to be a SAHM rather than continue my career or work at home. I worry about my husband's job, and the health benefits that are tied to it. Our lives are so tenuous. I wonder if my own parents felt that way, or if it's a function of the times we live in.

Looking for a snapshot of suburban family life? Pick up your school directory. It's an education in itself.

If you're bored, you're not paying attention...

The other day a fellow mom from my daughters' school told me she was getting a seasonal job because she was bored.

This is mind-boggling to me.

In a world at war, with thousands of children going hungry, with the Internet open 24/7, how is it possible to get bored?? There is always another book to read, another blog to write, another boneheaded government move to protest.

I have the opposite problem. The world of ideas is so vast and there is so much to be done that I can't wrap my mind around it. I have to take things piece by piece, in baby steps, just to begin to comprehend their place in the world, not to mention my own. There are days when I find it all so overwhelming that I just want to admit defeat and pull the covers over my head. There are also days when I blow a whole morning jumping from blog to blog, even reading all the trolls, just to get a glimpse of the sheer variety of human nature. That, and, well, a few Daily Show videos.

I can't remember being bored in my adult life, ever. As a kid, sure, sometimes, but that was in the Dark Ages before computers and cell phones and a driver's license of my own. Now I am paralyzed by choice, unable to do much of anything because I can't decide where to start. I'm not even bored by housework since I got an iPod. Now I can listen to books or podcasts while I'm folding laundry and doing dishes. My days are framed by the departures and arrivals of my children, but I have a good seven hours to call my own, most days. I wish I could say I was using them to the fullest. I'm new at this kids-in-school-all-day thing. Maybe I'll get the hang of it eventually.

When they go to college.

Life under the microscope

"What did you say to that driver, Mom?"

"What are you eating?"

"What are you doing on the computer?"

"Why did you do/say/eat/read that, Mom?"

Are these familiar to you? If so, then you are living under the microscope. You think employers are watching you, try living with a couple of young kids. They watch your every move and ask questions about every single thing they don't understand, which is quite a bit at first. As they get older and find out they already have all the answers, they ask less and lecture more, complete with rolled eyes.

You can't mutter something under your breath, because they have bat-like hearing. Unless you're actually talking to them, in which case they are stone deaf. I hear it's worse when they become teenagers. I can't imagine.

Sometimes it makes you really think about why you did/said/ate/read something, but most of the time it's just annoying, because the questions don't stop there. Once they find out what you said, they want to know exactly what you meant, complete with dictionary definitions. "I don't know" comes out of my mouth so often now that I really don't think I know bloody anything anymore. But if I spent the time to fully answer all the questions, I would do nothing else all day. No laundry, no cooking, nothing.

Hey, maybe that's not a bad idea...

Putting my money where my mouth is...

Well, now that I've vented my spleen about what I think is wrong with the current marketplace, let's get down to some solutions. Hey, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, right?

To recap, the family is so disrespected in the workplace that parents have trouble finding jobs, especially if they demand flexibility. Parents, mostly women at the moment, who choose to stay at home with their children pay the price in their careers, even if they choose to go back to work within a few years of leaving their jobs. Unless the string of employment is unbroken, it is difficult to break back in, more difficult than it was trying to find that first job after college or grad school. What is the solution to this?

Well, I have a couple of ideas. One has to do with anyone going back to work, the other refers to women specifically.

Health benefits for all
First of all, every family faces pressure to maintain at least one full-time career. Why? Benefits! How many part-time jobs offer full family benefits, or even individual benefits, at a level that will cover the basics without breaking the bank? At the same time, unless one pulls back from full time to part time without taking any time in between, it is impossible to find a part time job that uses one's skills; any professional job posting I've seen demands full time work. Part time jobs abound, but they are generally limited, at least in my area, to secretarial, clerical or health care.

These two problems go hand in hand, but they pose a chicken-egg problem: separating health benefits from employment would allow workers to explore job sharing and part time work as long as they could afford it, and a growing pool of qualified workers would allow employers to expand their part time job offerings without paying a price in quality of work. Imagine the possibilities! My husband and I (our fields overlap somewhat) could, in theory, share a job, or, failing that, work two part time jobs, making sure that our family's needs are met and the work gets done well. We would each have the intellectual stimulation and peer interaction we need, and we would each have roughly equal family time, leading to less resentment and more equality at home and at work.

Do you see where I'm going here? Universal health care fits like the last piece in the family values jigsaw puzzle. This promotes the family, helps the next generation see that both parents can have careers and still be available for them, and even helps to make the sexes more equal. What's not to like?

Equal pay for equal work
I promised you two potential solutions. It used to be that women were paid less, no matter what their jobs were, and no bones were made about it. Well, it's still true, but no one talks about it anymore; it's old news. It's gone underground. Women are still paid only about $.76 for each dollar a man earns, and access to management positions, which pay more, is still limited. Now, though, I think it is less due to the perception that women are incapable of doing the same work as well as men, and more to the assumption that every woman will, eventually, leave to have a baby. If she returns at all after that, it is further assumed that her commitment to her job will be compromised -- once again we see how parents, mothers especially, are penalized just for other people's assumptions. Men are still seen as breadwinners, while women's income is thought to be optional.

Then the demands of the family, whether children are involved or not, become burdensome. The sandwich generation can easily find itself between a rock and a hard place, and someone just has to stop working for money and deal with life. When a family has to make such a decision, which partner do you think is going to quit? Most highly-educated people partner up with other highly-educated people -- not universally, but more often than not -- so it's likely, everything else being equal, to be the woman who quits. (Yes, I know, there are plenty of exceptions, but I'm generalizing here. My mom always made more than my dad, so I hear you. Bear with me.)

Linda Hirshman's thesis in her American Prospect article is that this trend begins at home, that the inequality is due to imbalance in the housework. I argue the opposite: conditions in the workplace lead to a need for someone to be home to handle life while the worker puts in his/her 80-hour week. Because we can't afford to quit and lose our health benefits and 401(k)s (because, don't forget, companies don't offer pensions anymore -- we're on our own), women are more likely to leave their careers because they earn less, even if their jobs are similar to their partners'.

The solution? Universal health care unrelated to employment. Everything else will follow.

The Way We Live Now

(With apologies to the New York Times Magazine)

I have three children. Let's just get that out there right now. They're a big part of my life, and they dictate how I spend most of my time. I also have a husband, two aging parents and a mother-in-law. Now you know my dirty little secret.

All of my children are now in school all day, so I thought I'd go back to paid work. I worked part time for six years, running my own consulting business until I burned out from the exhaustion of caring for little kids all day, trying to get my work done at night, and, most importantly, my husband's attitude that my work came, at best, third, and my clients were supposed to understand that. It's been four years of SAHMing since I closed the business, and I've had enough of endless housework with nothing to show for myself at the end of the year. No raises, no respect.

Well, hah! Just *try* to find a job if you admit that you have a family that's important to you. Parents have gotten such a bad rap for taking time off for doctor appointments, school functions, and *gasp* family vacations that no one wants to hire us. Why hire someone like me when they can get a single, carefree recent college graduate to work longer hours, probably for less money and fewer benefits? They'll take longer to do not quite as good a job, but by golly they'll warm that chair for the right eight hours, and that's what counts.

Families are the new dirty little secret. Everyone has them, but no one dares acknowledge that they enjoy them or consider them important. Society would literally stop without them, but, hey, "it's the economy, stupid." If it doesn't help the bottom line, it's not going to happen. So, even though I could do a better job in a particular position, getting more done in less time, I won't get the job because I need some flexibility in my time. We're not talking about critical, fault-intolerant systems here, or bizarre work schedules. I don't apply for those jobs precisely because the hours are fixed and I understand why that's necessary. I apply for jobs where the work has to get done, but you don't have to be there 9-5 to do it.

I'm told that I shouldn't even mention that I need flexible hours. That seems disingenuous to me. I know that I want to be home for my children after school, which means working early hours -- not excessively early, just something like 7-3 -- and it seems reasonable to me to make that clear from the start. Is that wrong? Otherwise, I feel like I'm pulling a bait-and switch, and I hate those. But I'm expected to act like I have nothing else in my life but this potential job, like I live only for this company or that. Is that really what we've become??

This is a scary trend, with the Linda Hirshmans of the world telling us that caring for our own children is wrong and the child-free movement telling us that even having them is a bad thing. Just how does civilization continue if families and children aren't valued? And it's not a problem within the home, as Hirshman posits, but in the workplace; parents have trouble balancing work and family because their work environments don't value their families. They see families as a drain on our energy, not restorative. People in this country don't even take all their vacations anymore, largely because they're afraid of being dispensable at work!

Hirshman decries the highly-educated women of today who opt out of the rat race to enjoy their children. Who can blame them? When companies routinely lay off the employees that do the actual work in order to lavish bonuses on the top few, why should we give them our loyalty? Where is the real reward here? A paycheck, yes, but with a certain soullessness to go with it. You don't dare invest yourself too much in any job because it will just devastate you when you lose it. The problem isn't with staying home with your children when they need you. The obstacles come when you want to go back to paid work but you don't want to devote your entire life to it. That's when you find it impossible, and that's true across the board.

Most of the current "opt-out" generation hasn't found that out yet. They blithely think they can go back anytime, and perhaps many will, depending on their professions and their locations. But their children are still young, so it's on the back burner. What they don't understand is that they will always want to be there for their children, so going back to 80-hour weeks is not going to appeal to them, nor will it even be an option. They will be forever tainted.

They might as well wear a scarlet 'M'.