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.

...in defense of solitude...

I need a lot of time alone. I actually prefer to be alone.

Funny how I feel like I should be ashamed of that, like it's some kind of stigma. I'm not socially inept (at least I'm told I'm not), and I don't dislike people per se, but I find being around people tiring and difficult.

I'm lucky that I live in this technological time. I have friends that I haven't actually spoken to in years -- would never have heard from otherwise -- that I've reconnected with on Facebook. I'm able to keep in touch with a lot of people via email rather than hours talking on the phone.

But I just don't have time for that, and given a choice between talking on the phone with a friend I haven't spoken to in a while and reading a book, I'll choose the book every time. Relationships with people take effort, and I have to put enough effort into my family and my work relationships that I don't have any energy left at the end of the day. My children alone can sap the interpersonal strength right out of me, and I love them dearly. I almost always find myself thinking about the dozen things I have to get done by the end of the day and scolding myself for wasting time.

So, consider this an open apology to all my friends that I never call. None of you read this blog, but it's the thought that counts, right? See you on Facebook.

vacation from my time off

Today I got up at 6, worked from 7 to 2:30, came home and entertained four extra children aged 3-9 (who would not leave no matter how many times I told them it was time! to! go! home!) for two hours, threw a quick dinner on the table, took my son to karate.

I came home from karate, took the laundry off the clothesline, then came in to the sound of my two daughters yelling for me as they watched the water pour out of the overflowing toilet. Turned off the toilet, yelling at the girls about the joys of the plunger. Went downstairs to find the water leaking through the ceiling and pouring down onto the basement floor. Finally found the wet/dry vac in the darkest, remotest corner of the basement and the nozzle attachment on the opposite side of the basement (of course) as the water dripped from the ceiling onto a computer which I desperately hope was destined for the recycling center anyway, because it sure is now.

I went up to find my husband arrived home from work, bringing in groceries from the wholesale club, climbing over the mess of stuff piled in a corner of the foyer as we cleaned up the bathroom mess. He was calm, as one who walks in on chaos in progress can be, so I finished vacuuming the water, then set off on my bike, trusty trail-a-bike attached, to pick up my son at karate.

We arrived home and I had two Boca sausage links for my sumptuous dinner as my son made a sliver of carrot last for twenty minutes. He nibbled at each corner, whining about every single bite, until suddenly he realized that he hadn't done his homework. He is finally heading upstairs for bed, only forty minutes past his bedtime (and at least an hour past mine).

My seven hours at work were the most peaceful time of my day, except maybe for the commute. Tell me again how it's harder to be a working mother than to be a stay-home mother?

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.

It's all about health care...

So many of our country's ills could be ameliorated or even solved by universal, government-run health care.

Ok, maybe not our country's problems as a whole, but certainly a whole lot of women's issues.

Take, for example, abortion. The New York Times has an article out today about the new tactic being used by anti-choice activists: abortion is bad for a woman, too. That's absolutely true; how many women go through an abortion and emerge unscathed? It takes an emotional toll that can have repercussions even decades later.

That tactic misses the point of the pro-choice movement, but let's leave that for later. For now, just think about how much universally-accessible, free health care could change the face of pregnancy and child-rearing. A single woman now has to work full time just in order to get health benefits for herself and her child; if she were unable to work -- put on bed rest for a pregnancy-related complication, say -- she would lose her health benefits and her doctor's care. So she would have to continue to work, jeopardizing her health. It's lose-lose for a woman, and it could affect her physical health and her career for the rest of her life.

Now, imagine that this same woman had free health care unrelated to employment. If she were unable to work, there would be a financial burden placed on her, but not an insurmountable one. If she had family or friends to help her out for a while, she could manage, because medical bills wouldn't send her into bankruptcy. She could take an unpaid leave, or leave her job altogether, confident that her health would be preserved and she would be able to find another job when she was able. The child she eventually bore would get the well-baby care that children need, receive all the necessary immunizations, and have all the physical advantages that good medical care provides. If the child had medical problems, the infrastructure would be in place to make life as manageable as possible. Everybody wins, including the woman's employer, who has not had to pay for her health benefits, at least not directly.

Now, to return to the actual point of the abortion choice debate. It would be nice if no one ever felt that they had to get an abortion. Of course it would. But this isn't just about abortion. This is about control and choices for women. Enacting laws to regulate how abortions are offered and to whom is discriminating to women; the real point here is that a woman should have ultimate, unilateral control over her own body and what happens inside it. Full stop.

So here's my message to anti-choice activists: instead of lobbying for legislation to make abortion illegal or unavailable, thus sending desperate women underground for dangerous "medical" procedures, give women the support they need to make choices you can live with. Rather than bring a fist down on abortion altogether, offer a helping hand by using your powerful lobby to fight for health care for everyone, unrelated to employment. Rather than taking away a woman's power over her own body, give her the tools to preserve her own life as well as her unborn child's so she has more options. Don't be paternalistic and patronizing; be collaborative and respectful of a woman's life and health.

And don't forget to line up at the adoption agencies. If you're going to insist that every embryo, wanted or not, be brought to term, then step up and take responsibility for raising them. Put your money where your mouth is.

Next post: health care and working mothers.

The Music of My Life

Seventeen years ago, I walked into the sanctuary of the Presbyterian church for a Bach Choir rehearsal. The orchestra was playing -- it was among the last rehearsals before the concert, and the orchestra was rehearsing before the choir arrived. I walked down the center aisle, the pews around me sparsely populated, and imagined myself a bride. The conductor led the musicians with vigor, and I imagined that it was all for me. This was my dream for my wedding day, something I hadn't really thought too much about -- something I didn't really think would ever happen.

Two years later, I had my wedding after all, but there was no orchestra. There was very little music, and what there was was recorded. No one danced, no one revelled in music. It was rather subdued, actually, with a great deal of food. I married someone who does not share my passion for music, and, even though our wedding date was chosen well ahead of time, we spent far too much time choosing a home and far too little planning the wedding. It was nice, it served the purpose, but it was far from my vague idea of an ideal celebration.

Tonight I sang Bach's St. Matthew Passion with that same choir and that same orchestra. Some of the faces have changed, but the music is timeless. While the whole piece is full of emotion and drama, the last chorus is the most moving. In the story, Jesus' body has just been buried by Joseph of Arimathea, and all of the people who had been close to him gather around. Ruhet sanfte, ruhet wohl, they all whisper. Sleep softly, sleep well. This one chorus is, to me, the most passionate of all of Bach's work, much of which strikes me as beautiful in a matter-of-fact, almost mathematical way. This one's different. One can feel the wild extremes of emotion, from wailing grief to quiet reflection, just as someone very human might react to the death of a spouse.

As I anticipated it, and even as I sang it, I thought to myself: I want this to be sung at my funeral. If it can't be sung, then a recording should be played at full volume, so the walls shake. Music is a visceral, essential part of who I am, and this chorus needs to be felt in the bones. When I sing it with the choir, I feel the resonance of the singers around me in my body; I hear the passion in their voices, and I see the vigorous direction from the conductor. It is all so compelling; merely listening to a recording is far too passive for this music.

Once on my way down this path, I started to think about other music I would want to have at my funeral. Parts of the Faure Requiem, perhaps, maybe some of the B Minor Mass, definitely some Billy Joel, Susan Werner. But then I stopped short. What am I doing? I thought. It hasn't been that many years since I walked down the aisle in that church and thought about my wedding. Can it be that I've gotten so old that now I can only think of my funeral?

This is disturbing. But there is no other event for which I can plan any music I want. It is the only celebration of me that I can foresee; it's just unfortunate that I can't be there for it. I'd sure love the music..

Blood is thicker...

I am an only child.

I am acutely aware of this as I grow older, as do my parents. They are all I have of my personal history, the only people who have been there from the beginning. And they are aging at an alarming rate. My parents never thought it terribly important for me to get to know my extended family, and my father's alcoholism and my mother's need for a perfect family facade kept them from socializing much at all. I didn't meet my great-uncle, who lived only half an hour from me my whole childhood, until I was in college. It just never occurred to my dad to take me along when he visited. I have cousins, but they remember me as a precocious six-year-old about whom my mother would babble on and on ad nauseam.

What I do have is very close family friends who lived across the street from us, starting when I was ten years old. They haven't been there from the very beginning, but they've been around the longest. When I think of my family, they and their relatives are part of it, and the children of that family are the closest things I have to siblings. We've rolled our eyes about our parents, wandered freely between our two houses, seen each other through important milestones. They were my best friends, and I'm happy to say that they're still in my life. My children and I spent an afternoon with them two weeks ago, celebrating birthdays.

Oddly, though, when I come home after one of these visits, I feel sad. They are complete in themselves; they don't need me. My "pseudo-sister" has a real brother; my "pseudo-brother" has a real sister. Our children get along like cousins, and we do call them cousins/nieces/nephews even though there is no blood relation. It is clear to me, though, that I see our relationship differently, more intensely. They don't seem to mind, but they don't seem to share the intensity. That's what makes me sad.

One day, my parents will pass, and I will be alone. I have a husband, of course, and children, and in-laws, but that can't take the place of people who knew you when, who can bring up that embarrassing moment that you thought you'd forgotten and share a giggle. I have brothers-and sisters-in-law, but they are mostly Indian, so we've never been on the same wavelength (I feel the strongest connection with my only American brother-in-law -- we can joke about our spouses' odd habits and be reassured that we're not the ones who are weird). We do things differently -- approach life differently, and it's frustrating when my own assumptions, based on a life spent in the United States, clash with my husband's assumptions, and we both feel we're right. I always want to call dibs because we live in my country, after all, and I wasn't the one who chose to immigrate, but I don't want to be completely insensitive. Just, you know, moderately so.

Mostly, that day, I was struck by how comfortable PB's own family and his wife's family were with each other, and how nice it would be to be married to someone from my own country, where our families of origin would have common ground. Now, I feel like I'm constantly on the outside looking in. My mother doesn't much care for my mother-in-law, though of course both are nice to each other. My father doesn't much care for anybody anymore, so he tends to sit in the corner and fall asleep. My mother-in-law and I get along fine now that we don't live under the same roof, and she has stopped pointing out my flaws -- which are legion, I grant, but I don't need to be reminded. I know that she thinks of me as a daughter, and I would do anything for her, as she would for me, but there will always be a gulf between us. We will never understand each other, not in a million years. I and my family can't sit companionably with them on a lazy spring afternoon and talk of nothing at all.

What it comes down to, in the end, though, is this: my husband is a good man, the right one for me. We agree on a lot of things, from tree-hugging to politics to books and movies. We have our ups and downs like everyone else, and we have as many disagreements as everyone else. Everyone has to work through their different expectations, and it never ends. Despite my own feelings of alienation (which are my own problem, dammit!) I do have a husband and children who love me and whom I love. I will not be alone.

Right?

Turn it off! For God's sake, turn it off!

I have neighbors who, although they are lovely people, often do something that makes me angry and fearful for the future of the global village and of the planet. They drive to the bus stop (or somewhere else in the neighborhood that they could walk to easily) and then sit there with their motors running, even in lovely, temperate weather.

Some other people will drive up to the bus stop, get out of the car to chat and leave it running. Now that really doesn't make sense to me. What is the point? It's not keeping you warm (or cool), you're not listening to the radio, so why? The other day another neighbor came over to drop something off. She left her car running in my driveway while she came to the door. We inevitably started talking about this and that, so her quick visit turned into several minutes while her empty car chugged away. As she left my porch, she bemoaned mildly the cost of gasoline. Sometimes, I want to just bang my head against the wall. Or hers.

Now, granted, I'm one of those people -- I turn off my car at long stop lights. I'm so worried about global warming that I hang my clothes out to dry until the temperature drops below freezing and I can't feel my fingers by the time I've taken them down. I sometimes take three times as long to do the grocery shopping because I insist on riding my bike to the store (when I have the time and the weather is half-decent -- I'm not a martyr). And my house is always cold because I won't turn the heat pump up over 65 in the winter (wear thermal underwear! put on a sweater! my children hear when they complain). I'm sure my neighbors think I'm just as much of an oddball for doing all those things, and, let's face it, they're not wrong.

But is it really asking too much for drivers to turn off an idling car for a few minutes while they wait for children to emerge from school? Is it a hardship to wear a warm jacket in the car so you don't have to keep it running for the heat? It's not impossible to turn off a car on a beautiful spring day when it's a perfect 68 degrees, is it? The exact numbers vary, but experts say that, if your car is off for ten to thirty seconds before you turn it back on, you've come out ahead in gas consumption. Thirty seconds, people!

Even if you don't believe the science about global warming, this kind of thing hits you in your wallet. Our electric bills went down significantly this fall when I started drying all our clothes outside. Given a choice between joining a karate school three minutes away versus 15 minutes away, we joined the closer one. Each decision is small, but they add up to an ability to live very comfortably on one income.

We don't deprive ourselves, either. We just prioritize, and we indulge the things that are important to us and jettison the stuff that isn't. Being mindful about other areas of our life has given us the wherewithal to pursue the things that are important to us, and that makes the small sacrifices worthwhile.

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.

Day Care and the SAHM (or, Validation and the Modern Woman)

This is a debate that is never going to end. Studies will continue to be done, psychobabble televangelists will continue to expound with ever-greater pomposity, and women will continue to second-guess their career choices forever and ever, amen.

What we're all really doing is looking for validation. Did I make the right choice in staying home with my children? Would it be better for them if I went back to work and put them in day care, giving us more money for trips to Europe and piano lessons? We need someone to tell us that what we're doing is right for our children and/or for ourselves, and that it's okay to put ourselves or our children first, whichever one we've tried to do. Thank you, feminism, for giving us the choice, and thank you, Eli Lilly, for giving us Prozac so we can deal with the cultural/personal/financial consequences of that choice.

Why are we so dependent on this outside validation? Why isn't it enough that our family is happy with whatever our situation is? Are we all determined to be SuperMom and outdo every other woman on the planet? Or are we all vast sinkholes of need, requiring constant positive feedback to maintain our own self-esteem?

Because it seems that it's not enough for women to be happy with their own arrangements. We need everyone else to be happy with them, too, or we consider them a failure. How interesting it is that men are seldom plagued with these doubts. It is my impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that men are happy if they are happy, but women aren't happy unless everyone else is happy, too. And that's the thing that is going to keep women as primary caregivers until the end of time.

I am a SAHM whose children are all in school all day. I could easily go back to work; in fact, I was offered, and declined, a full-time job at a local college. The problem is, the full-time job I already have isn't going to go away. The house will still have to be cleaned, dinner will still have to be made, laundry will have to be done, child care will still be of utmost importance, but I'll have a lot less time to do it all in, and zero time to sit and contemplate a story idea, read a book, play the piano, etc. I have no illusions about how much my husband will do around the house: he already does pretty much what he's going to do, and I'm not ready to go into unending battle to get him to do more. But I still troll the job listings, just in case the perfect job appears out of nowhere. Niggling guilt hangs at the back of my mind, repeating the trope that, because I can work, I should work. I feel guilty because I like being home by myself all day, and somehow that translates into being selfish.

So I'm staying home with the kids, yes, but I have to admit, these days it's an excuse for staying home and doing what I want to do for a change. I could go back to work, sure, but I don't really want to. I feel like I should for future financial security, but if I do, I'll never get another chance like this. I started working when I was 13 years old, and this is the first time in my life that I've felt like I have time to follow some dreams, try out new things. When I was young and single, I was so desperately afraid of being without health insurance and a paycheck that I worked my ass off and went to graduate school at the same time. Then, when my children were tiny, I ran my own business while they slept until I just couldn't physically handle the sleep deprivation anymore. This is my first taste of freedom, and I'm not ready to give it up for a bunch of shoulds.

But there's this part-time job I found on careerbuilder....

Freedom to Marry

A few weeks ago, at our Meeting for Worship for Business, my Quaker meeting was asked to help our Yearly Meeting with the wording of a minute about same-gender marriage.

Now, we Quakers tend to be bleeding-heart liberals, so I was surprised to find that there has been opposition to this within Yearly Meeting. All they are attempting to do is affirm any marriages performed in the care of Monthly Meetings, which is entirely appropriate. Despite appearances to the contrary, Quaker hierarchy is somewhat upside-down. In most religious organizations, authorities at the higher levels of the hierarchy dictate to the churches what the doctrine will be, a la Catholicism's Pope. In the Society of Friends, Yearly Meeting is just an organizational construct designed to help the Monthly Meetings communicate. Monthly Meetings, the ones with all those historic meetinghouses that dot the Southeastern Pennsylvania landscape, hold the most authority when it comes to what happens with Quaker decisions.

Now, my Monthly Meeting minuted our support of same-gender marriage ten years ago with a strongly-worded statement of the sanctity of marriage and the equality of everyone regardless of sexual orientation. Indeed, equality is one of the testimonies, the central tenets of Quakerism as I understand it. Our minute predates my involvement in Quaker meeting, but I embrace it wholeheartedly.

The Yearly Meeting minute is less emphatic (in my opinion) in its support of our LGBT members and attenders, and it has been a source of controversy. I was surprised to see that some people present at the Yearly Meeting last summer when this was discussed stood aside when the minute was approved. I couldn't conceive of Quakers (and one of those people is soon to be an officer of the Yearly Meeting) embracing equality but not fully embracing same-gender marriage. The minute affirms marriages performed by Monthly Meetings, not just within our Yearly Meeting, but all meetings everywhere. It is simply stated, yet something about it bothers me.

Here it is: "Philadelphia Yearly Meeting affirms the marriage of same-gender couples conducted under the care of Monthly Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends." Simple, right?

Well, yes, but I think it doesn't go far enough. I may be misguided, but I think this minute is meant for outside consumption, to state the Quaker position on this for non-Quakers. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is a very visible body of Quakers and can be expected to speak for its Monthly Meetings to the world. Our Faith & Practice book is very careful to use gender-neutral pronouns when discussing marriage, so same-gender marriage seems to be tacitly accepted (and this document dates back at least a decade). Making a statement that is not clear, unequivocal and emphatic seems to me to be moot. We already support marriage, whoever the participants are; making a separate statement of support of same-gender marriage must strengthen that tacit acceptance in some visceral way to make any sense to me. If Quakers come out with a weak statement of support, then I think that support can easily be called into question by non-Quakers, which weakens our credibility.

Friends have noted that the word "affirm" has special meaning for Quakers, and that is very true. Quakers don't swear to tell the truth in a court of law, for instance; we affirm that we tell the truth all the time, not just when there is legal consequence if we don't. However, non-Quakers don't invest such power in affirmation, nor are they necessarily aware of the strength of it in Quaker circles. While this minute may be a powerful statement to Quakers, others may not see it that way.

This is my objection to the wording of the minute. Perhaps I haven't been a Quaker long enough to truly understand the power of affirmation. But I think the mainstream media would see it as weak, which undermines the actual strong advocation of equality in marriage that so many Quakers espouse. We need to "place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take," as Thomas Jefferson famously wrote of the Declaration of Independence. There is no room for ambiguity here.

The Zen of the Clothesline

I air-dry my clothes. All of them, when weather permits. As it gets colder, my fingers get number as I hang them out and take them down, but I find myself enjoying the laundry much more. Odd, isn't it?

When I use the sun and wind to dry the clothes, I have to be much more aware of the weather over the next few days (should I do two loads today while it's sunny, or will there be more sunny days this week?). I have to slow down and think about the individual garments I hang. My clothesline is a double one, a single line run through a pulley at each end to double the hanging space. If I hang the clothes correctly, I get each side of the line at a different level, so I don't have one shirt behind another, or a towel blocking the sun from the pants behind it. I have to calculate the weight and the length of the clothes on each half of the line to keep items from being blocked, but also to keep heavier things from dragging on the ground. It is a thoughtful, mindful process, which makes me feel a connection to the earth and its processes, and to the power of the sun and wind. I am lucky that I am able to air-dry clothes, and that for me it is indeed a choice.

The sun in my backyard disappears shortly after noon, so I have to start the laundry day early and be mindful of where the sun is by what time. The position of the sun in the backyard changes with the seasons, too, so I'm more aware of the passage of time, not just on a small daily scale, but on the scale of seasons and years. If it's a windy day, sunlight is less essential to the drying process, though either one helps. As the seasons change, my schedule must change with it. It is calming to let go of that schedule, to let the sun determine when the laundry gets done.

Now that the temperature has fallen below freezing, I am back to using my dryer. The laundry once again feels like a burden, a chore that must be done. Perhaps I am only responding to the novelty of the clothesline, but I had a shorter one before this and never tired of it. Now that I can dry the clothes anytime, I feel like a robot, feeding the clothes into one machine, then another, in the endless, unchanging process of keeping five people in clean clothes. Interestingly, my children never ran out of underwear in the warmer weather, when I reliably did one load of laundry a day, but now too often I get frantic requests for things that haven't yet been washed. The process has lost its magic, and I feel much less connected with the earth. I look forward to the spring for so many reasons, but my purple clothesline beckons, and I can't wait to use it again.

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.

Supermarket hell

Okay, it's an oxymoron. All supermarkets are hell.

It's not just the old people who seem to think they own the middle of each and every aisle. Or the ones who hold kaffee klatsches with their myriad little friends right in front of my brand of applesauce. It's not even the small screaming children that parents are so often forced to bring with them (I used to do this, so I don't really have any right to complain). No.

It's the tile floor.

I went to Wegman's today, as a change from my usual Giant run. I keep hearing such wonderful things about Wegman's, and I'm always so underwhelmed, that I feel like I have to keep visiting the store in different moods so I can see what magical secrets it holds. Is there a secret handshake that gets you into a special room filled with chocolate brownies? 'Cause that would do it for me.

Tell me why supermarket designers, knowing that 95% of their customers will push a wheeled cart on their floors, put tile down on them. Tile, with cracks between them. Cracks, which make the cart vibrate and rumble no matter how carefully you move over them. Multiply it by the dozen or so carts that happen to be in your vicinity, and it becomes a deafening roar.

Now, I'm one of those who find grocery-shopping so mind-numbing that I listen to my iPod throughout. You may find me anti-social, and that's fine with me: I am anti-social in the supermarket. I listen to podcasts, not music, which means my listening is a bit more active than it might otherwise be.

Now, Giant has a tile floor, but only in the produce department. I cruise through there as fast as I can and get the hell onto the smooth floor. They have the usual odious muzak playing, but I can pretty effectively tune it out by raising the volume on the iPod a bit, not enough to ruin my hearing, but enough to keep me in my comfortable bubble.

But Wegman's has a tile floor throughout the whole fucking place! Everywhere I go, the cart makes an awful noise, duplicated and resonated by all the carts around it, until I feel like I would welcome the godawful muzak at Giant. This, plus all the luscious food they display all over the place -- these people know their marketing! -- that makes me want to buy tons of things I don't need; I finally put back the one thing I had in my cart and left Wegman's behind. I drove to the nearby Giant, picked up the things I needed, avoided the things I didn't need (I committed the cardinal sin of going to the grocery store hungry and on the verge of a PMS chocolate craving), and got out of there in record time.

Where is it written that grocery shopping must be an "experience"? I want to get in, cross things off my list, and get the hell out. I don't want to sit and have a cup of coffee. I don't want to try this and try that. I don't want the senior citizens to be further encouraged to hang around, blocking the aisles, chatting about the cheese samples they just had at the deli. And I really don't want to push my cart over tiles, no matter how much they add to the decor.

Call me a supermarket curmudgeon. Bah, humbug!

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.