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")?

Never mind...

Whew, sorry... I had some Democratic afterglow going on when I wrote my last post. Life was rosy, and I just didn't want to let it go. Now we know it's not only business as usual, but he's not even going to hide the fact that he lies. Just imagine the workout his veto power will suddenly get. He's been saving himself for this.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Feel the love, baby!

I honestly think the last two years of Bush will be different. It's not because he's newly empathetic, or because he's seen the philosophical light. It's because he's been chastened, and he's an opportunist. He'll cozy up to Pelosi and company because it's politically expedient, and doing so might salvage his legacy. And, let's face it, that's all that matters to him now. He's gonna go clear brush after this, so he doesn't have to care about the next public job. He can put all four seconds of his focus on looking like that uniter he keeps saying he is, with the excuse to his right-wing advisors that the people have spoken.

I think we'll see a more centrist Bush who doesn't have to pander to fundamentalists and ultra-conservatives. He can tell Turd Blossom to shove it. He could actually salvage his presidency in these last two years and come out smelling like a rose. The question is, will his ol' buddies be looking out for his interests or for the Republican party's? And will he listen to them?

We know for sure they won't be looking out for the country.

Goodbye, Smirking Bigot!

As a Pennsylvanian, I have long been ashamed of Rick Santorum. I hate his smirk almost as much as I hate Bush's, though Santorum does at least seem to be able to string a few words together into an intelligible sentence, which gives him a leg up on both Bushes.

And now he's gone. Yippeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But, as Crooks and Liars quoted Bill Bennett as saying, <begin poor arnold impression> he'll be back <end poor arnold impression>. Apparently some think he might run for Prez in 2008. God help us.

Oh, and check out Bitch Ph.D's picture of Nancy Pelosi. If that doesn't elicit gloating giggles, I don't know what will. It's time we had a mother of five running the House. Don't make me come up there, young man!

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.

Irony for the Day

I was hanging my laundry out on the line this morning when it occurred to me that this was an extremely ironic activity for November.

I hang my laundry out in order to save energy, which helps fight global warming. But why is it that I can still do this in Pennsylvania in November? Global warming.

Hmmmm.

Are Quakers Christians?

I've officially been a Quaker for only a few months, but I've self-identified as one for several years, despite growing up Methodist. My children have never known any other religious institution. But this week I feel like I've missed the point. Or it's missed me.

I got into a discussion with two [Ff]riends at meeting on Sunday about the Bible and Christianity in general. You see, I'm one of those Quakers who don't believe in that Jesus stuff. I believe he was a terrific teacher, and there are many lessons to be learned from the stories about him, but the resurrection, son of God stuff... not so much.

I'm not sure about God, either. What I can believe in is the Light within and the Quaker testimonies. Let's see if I can remember them all (probably not): peace, truth, equality, community, stewardship, simplicity, social action. I've seen them paraphrased in many ways, but this is how I see them. Another important point that isn't spelled out is gentleness. Gentleness with each other, with other non-Friends, and with our environment. To me, these are a recipe for living, regardless of what you believe in within your own heart. Everyone has the Light [of God] within, and it's our purpose to "answer" it, as George Fox said.

George Fox also said that the Religious Society of Friends were Christians and that the Bible was an important source of inspiration. Here's where George and I part ways. I believe the Bible is a product of its time, just as, say, the Nancy Drew mysteries were/are a product of their time. The Bible is full of conventional wisdom, but not of the modern era, and with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices, all bets are off. It could be that the Bible was a political document, written by a group of men who planned to build a dynastic church that would make them and their descendants wealthy and powerful. It could be that parts of the original gospels were hidden away in ancient Egypt because those power-hungry men wanted them destroyed. We can't know. What we do know is that the Bible was written by men of a certain time, and humans of all races, creeds and colors always have their own agendas. If it were truly the word of God, it wouldn't be full of contradictions and anachronisms for the modern age. I would hope it would be truly timeless, with truths that hold for eternity. The Bible as we know it doesn't represent that for me. It has some good lessons in it, but I don't think it's any more important than a lot of other books.

The discussion I had with my [Ff]riends at meeting concerned the decision by Worship & Ministry to give Obadiah books to kindergartners instead of children's Bibles. I cheered this decision, having had to comfort my then-six-year-old daughter as she sobbed for an entire day after reading about the crucifixion several years ago. I said then that I don't see why horrific events that may or may not have happened 2000 years ago need to be a part of the gentleness that I know and love about Quakers. It's fine if some Friends choose to believe it, but I don't see it as an essential part of Quakerism, despite the fact that George Fox espoused it. I'm sometimes disturbed by the fact that my children get mixed messages about Quakers and Christianity in and out of meeting. I just have to trust that they will find their own paths using all the tools they're given, not just the Christian ones. (Not to mention that their papa is a nominally-Hindu atheist, but that's another story).

Anyway, my [Ff]riends were disturbed by the decision because they wanted their children to get this very important book from their meeting. I can understand that, and I believe, as does one of my [Ff]riends, that asking the parents to choose for their own children might have been a better choice. (Worship & Ministry will give Bibles to the children, but not until 8th grade). They also told me that some people apparently feel that they need to temper their messages in meeting so they have a less Biblical tone. I wish that were not true, because they should say what they believe whether others agree with it or not, but if they don't feel they can, I'm not sure what I can do about that. Quakers have a time-honored tradition of saying what they believe regardless of their audience, often going to jail in the process. I don't see why it should be different now. No one's going to arrest anyone for it, at least not yet.

Anyway, my point is, once again, I feel like an outsider. I left the Methodist church because I didn't believe in the Protestant Bible and I really didn't like having someone lecture me every week on what I should do and say and think. I was secular for many years, believing that there was no spiritual community that would welcome a heathen like me. I thought I had found a home in my meeting, but in the months since I became a member, I've been wondering if I've been kidding myself. I'm feeling the push-pull of needing to stand up for myself and my beliefs but also to be gentle with my Christian Friends, and it's hard. Answering that of God in everyone, even people I don't particularly like, has been a challenge; one that I usually fail at miserably. I'm not good at being gentle with everyone, but I try. I attended my meeting for seven years before I joined, largely because all my reading indicated that Quakers were Christians, make no mistake, and I couldn't reconcile myself with that. It was only the reassurance of my [Ff]riends that I was not alone in my beliefs that led me to go ahead and apply for membership.

I know that I can believe in that of God in everyone, even if I can't always answer it. I know that I want to live by the Quaker testimonies as much as I can. But my faith is rooted on the Earth, in the people and their Light, not in some amorphous presence called God, or in an old storybook. I can't be a Christian (or a Jew or a Muslim), but I really want to be a Quaker. I hope I still can.

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...

Joy restored

I spent the last few months in a funk. Hiding from the telephone, telling my kids to leave me alone, burying myself in my iPod and the Internet. I felt like I was in mourning, but I didn't know what for. I felt like I was never going to be really happy again.

Tonight I broke out of that for a few hours. I don't know how long I can hold onto this feeling, but my heart is moved and my soul is full. I sang Bach and Mozart with my choir for two hours, after sharing a German meal with them. I could feel every cell in my body; I was alive to my core.

We had been on summer hiatus since May, when we had our annual Festival, our 99th. I didn't realize how much I missed it, how much I missed the people as well as the music, until I was there amidst it all. It had seemed like work that first week in May, with rehearsals every night, seeing my family only for a couple of hours each night, coordinating soccer practices and scout meetings with my rehearsals and concerts. But now, it's all just magic. We're learning new music (well, new to this particular group, and some is new to me), and it's Mozart, even though we're a Bach choir.

We began by singing his Ave Verum Corpus, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written (see more here and here). It is beautiful in its simplicity and reverence and brings peace to your soul. We then moved on to the Coronation Mass. You can hear Mozart's mercurial personality in the music. The arrogant boy, puffing out his chest with disdain for lesser composers, followed quickly by the awe-struck servant of God who is humbled by his gift. The Agnus Dei is reminiscent of the Ave Verum, but the Gloria breaks out in joy and contagious enthusiasm. I imagine Mozart as a very passionate and charismatic man-boy, someone whose supreme self-confidence made it impossible to take one's eyes off him, but, like so many geniuses, someone whose basic needs had to be taken care of for him because he just didn't register such nonsense. I feel in his music that he lived for it, that God began and ended with it, and that he had time for nothing else. Perhaps that's why he only lived to not-quite-36.

It is a miracle that we can feel the force of one man's personality 215 years after he died. Bach wrote truly great music, but, perhaps because I know it (well, the sacred choral stuff) so well, the force of Bach's personality doesn't hit me as hard as Mozart's. I may have become inured to its effects after almost 20 years of singing it (though the B Minor Mass still moves me to tears even after some 45 performances of it), but I think Bach's relatively long and happy life makes his music more straightforward, with less ambiguity. Not passionless, but passionate within the context, without the huge ups and downs of Mozart.

Music is a language -- really the only world-wide language. We don't all know the great composers of every country, but the universally-acknowledged masters, like Bach and Beethoven are known by all, even if peripherally. Imagine sitting down with a stranger from a foreign country and trying to convey one's feelings. All you need to do is find the right piece of music, and even if one's counterpart hasn't heard it before, s/he can get an inkling of what's going on in your head. It's Tower of Babel stuff! It's basic to our humanity, something that binds us as common inhabitants of Earth.

Douglas Adams said it best: "When I listen to Mozart, I understand what it is to be a human being; when I hear Beethoven, I understand what it is to be Beethoven; but when I listen to Bach, I understand what it is to be the universe." I think that's it -- it isn't that Bach's personality is less forceful than Mozart's. It's more that Bach's music is a basic ingredient of the universe; we're permeated with it, it feels like part of us, like it's always been there and always will be, like a force of nature, timeless. Its ebb and flow is our ebb and flow. Whoever the composer, communication is happening on a very basic, visceral level, and it can bring intimacy to strangers.

Joy restored. That's what it feels like. It was missing from my life, and now it's back. Listening to music is for me too far removed; I need to be part of the music, inside it, making it happen. I can't go to concerts because I want so desperately to sing or play myself. I like to sing alone sometimes, but sharing the joy is the real key. There is nothing like singing beautiful music with people who love it as much as you do. It's better than any drug.

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'.