What Defines “Work”?

One of the problems I have anytime people are trying to quantify a mother’s work is that I think it’s basically impossible. (Last Sunday’s NY TImes article on “equal parenting” is sure causing quite a stir among couples I know…)

I am, you might say, officially “off duty” at 10:43 at night - both kids asleep - and yet, if I were a sitter, I’d still be getting paid, and my ear is cocked, my boobs at the ready should they be needed, etc.

That is, I very rarely “get off work.”

Is it possible to walk off the job? To take a break? Without putting the kids in danger? I’m not so sure. There are times when I want to say to my partner, “You know what? The diapers are full, everyone’s hungry and bored, no one wants to sleep, but I really want to go read a book up a tree while drinking colt 45 - see ya!”

But I don’t.

The other problem with the whole “parenting as work thing” is that it’s not always totally pure work - kind of like when you’re in the office and surfing the web. It’s enjoyable loafing that kind of counts as work, because heck, you’re putting in your time at the desk and no doubt, you need to know what’s going on in the world, too, don’t you?

So yeah, I have “playdates” and “coffee” and “pool time,” during which I have a lot of fun with other people and / or my kids, and that is very hard to call work at all, because I’m just living, it’s not “work.”

Which makes me sad, really, because when did “work” become something so forced, formal, external, disconnected? Somewhere as humans moved from being hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists whose work and play blended together, religion and food-gathering part of the same activity, we got more and more removed from how we obtained our food, we ended up typing in cubes…

Being a parent can be work, it can also be pleasure, and trying to account for it, while I get the intention, is trying to take something amazing and amorphous and screw it into a cube that comes from a whole separate kind of ideology. Instead, why don’t we try to make “work” fit into the parenting/domestic/female-type idea of Being? Why don’t we try to integrate what we do with who we are and how we live, as opposed to trying to fit the latter into what we do?

Am I making sense? I feel like it’s “feminist” to quantify “mother” “work” - but I think that’s a very superficial assumption. It’s far more feminist to envision a reversal, an upheaval of the whole stratified, rigidified system of “workers” in our capitalist society.

Revolution, you know, begins at home.

Why Single Parents Will Change the World

It’s because men I know raised by single or mostly single parents end up being Awesome Husbands.

Why? Because

a) they have to learn to do things around the house/pick up the slack, cooking, cleaning, taking care of themselves/siblings instead of having a parent (mother) doing it for them

b) they don’t get exposed to screwed up male-female patterns of privilege that exist in most marriages

My ex’s mother, for instance, walked out on her family when he was around 11. It was sad and tragic. The young boy suddenly was cooking dinner for his father and sibling, had to make money for his own clothes, do his own laundry, clean the house, watch his sister - basically, his dad forced him to take the place of the missing mother.

But I benefited because in a relationship where domestic chores don’t have a gender attached to them, when it’s just What You Do to keep the house clean and organized, to make food and do laundry, to look after other people, to be considerate and caring, when that is second nature because you had to do it growing up - well, lord, it is a breath of fresh air to any woman.

But it’s that kind of equality in the domestic sphere that needs to happen. It’s not enough that women are rocking it in the workplace sphere - the balance has to occur in the home as well. And this means that something has to change for men - for the way we raise our sons - single parents or not.

I look at my little boy. He is my mission.

Single parents have to do it by default. But more than that, single parents themselves break down gender barriers - mothers work, fathers clean - there’s no division of labor, they have to do everything (my mom was a single parent for a while; she was amazing). Boys, like girls, take their cues from what their parents do. If their mother does all the cleaning and their dad doesn’t, that will seep in, no matter how much the mom (!) tries to get them to clean up. Why should the son clean up if dad doesn’t?

If we can, let the rest of us do it by choice. Nothing so harsh as making our boys serve us pot roast the way my poor ex had to - but by expecting, requiring, everyone in the home to pick up after themselves equally.

And that includes the husbands.

Book Advice in Action: How to Listen So Your Kids Will Talk…

Okay, so I found the book How to Listen So Your Kids Will Talk and Talk So Your Kids Will Listen at the book sale for 50 cents the other day, and I’ve been studying it ever since, as I’ve heard rave reviews about how it helps you get your kids to cooperate instead of tangling with them all the time.

But I’ve obviously not got the techniques down very well.

Instead of telling your kids “no,” you’re supposed to do non-confrontational things like Describe a situation, Give Information. When kids hear a description or get information, they supposedly draw their own conclusions and make the best informed choices, ie, cooperate and behave.

So, my daughter goes from
painting the paper to painting her hand.

I say, describing, “You are painting your hand purple.”

She: “I AM… it’s purple!”

I say, informing, “We will have to scrub that extra hard.”

Happily agreeing, she says, “In the sink!”

I try again with informing: “We don’t paint on our hands. We paint on paper.”

To which she replies, “We don’t paint on paper. We paint HANDS.” So sweetly. So charmingly. So WRONGLY.

I run to the book - what am I doing wrong? I guess I should move to Giving Choices - “You can either stop painting your hand or -” or what? No, I want her to stop painting her hand! What the hell am I supposed to do now? How do I avoid NO right now?

I worry…

…and then notice that she has moved on to painting her toes.

Oh Good Grief.

Hey, Non-Mother: Read this!

So you are an employer of/ coworker with / married to a mother?

And do you ever have those cringing moments where you think that the mother you hire/work with/know is not fully functioning in the brain area?

She’s not keeping up with the latest current events, she’s not focused on The Issues, she seems ‘brain dead’ or mushily thinking to you?

Well, I’m here to tell you that, while yes, she may not be concerning her mental powers with what you consider to be worthy subjects - politics, fashion, work - she IS using her brain in rigorous and useful ways that not only will make her an excellent employee, but an insightful human being necessary to our culture and species at large.

Don’t believe me? Read this article about it - all the way through - and let me know what you think.

And all you mothers out there should read it, too, and give yourself a break if you’ve had a baby and lost interest in ‘the normal things’ - you’re doing important work when you’re thinking about your child - stop apologizing for having “Mommy Brain.” That’s a smart head you’re talking about!

Thanks to my friend who forwarded this along to me, confirming my suspicion that all this delicious time I’m spending with my infant and toddler is not a vacuum or waste, but really amazing fodder for learning what it means to be human…

Mary Poppins

You know you’re losing your mind when it’s 4 am and you’re nursing your newborn and what’s running through your mind is a lame attempt to recall the analytical diagrams you learned to use in your college senior critical theory class to deconstruct texts so that you can apply them to Mary Poppins.

 

I can’t stop thinking about Mary Poppins.

 

I’ve been watching it way too much and I want to keep watching it. For one thing, Julie Andrews is amazing. I find myself watching her closely to see when the Mary Poppins veneer will drop, but the mask seems completely nonporous. (And yes, she won an Oscar for it - can you believe it? An Oscar for a kid’s movie? And yet, she completely deserves it.)

 

But as I’ve been thinking about motherhood and work, the storyline of Mary Poppins has popped in, and I’ve noticed a few things about it that are kind of interesting that I’d never thought about before.

 

Take a look:

 

Okay, so Mary Poppins is essentially a story about a nanny whose presence magically transforms a father from being a stuffy, distant, order-freak to being a jolly, engaged dad. Their relationship is at the crux of the story (hence the highlighted line above). It’s not about the kids so much as it is about the father, MP as the catalyst.

The diagram above shows how the four main adult characters are contrasted, opposed, and compared to each other to create the conflicts, both major and minor, that run through the story.

 

And how does she do it? Of what exactly does her magic consist? Well, she brings to the female/domestic sphere the element of Art – music, dance, singing, paintings – and causes it, through the children, to infect the male/business sphere. In this case, Art reveals to those it touches a truth about life that allows them to live freely and happily, a truth innate to children that adults tend to forget: That the structures of culture and rules are essentially absurd, random, silly; they do not make up reality; the seriousness with which we treat money and power and banking damages our connections to the heart of life, which is our connections to others and to our imagination. All the things Mr. Banks stakes his identity and security upon are just as imagined / invented as the adventures the children experience with MP. He discovers that “supercalifragilisticexpealidocious” - utter babble – is the only response to getting fired from his job, that indeed, his job is ephemeral, fragile, not as sturdy as he had believed, and he discovers the essential inherent impermanent and absurdity of life.

 

This is a very postmodern, buddhist kind of realization – how funny to find it in this staple of Disney creations.

 

The other two more minor characters provide counterpoints to Mr. Banks and MP.

 

Contrasted to the strict Mr. Banks is Bert the chimney sweep, whose job changes to that of kite seller or music maker or artist depending on his whims or the needs of the moment. He lives a flexible life in relationship with the world and people around him. He doesn’t have the house/family stability of Mr. Banks (we’re never really sure where he lives), but he can therefore survive and lives a fuller life – he is the reed that bends in the wind, while Mr. Banks is the rigid stick that snaps, to borrow an image from the Tao te Ching.

 

Then there’s Mrs. Banks, whose character’s actions / treatment puzzles me. She’s constantly seen escaping the house in a flurry to go fight for women’s rights – ostensibly, she could be at home with the children, but apparently she doesn’t want to be nor does the film hold her responsible for doing so.

 

She is in the process of fleeing the domestic sphere, abandoning her ‘place’ with the female servants and the nanny, but her duty is not called into question in the same way as Mr. Banks.

 

From this I can only conclude that the film is saying that the health of the family requires Mr. Banks to come home/go fly a kite, not for Mrs. Banks to stay put, which is amazing, given the year this film was produced and the Victorian era of its setting.

My general conclusion: The film underscores something I firmly believe: if women are going to achieve equality in this culture, it’s not just women who need to be enlightened and fighting for their rights - it’s the men who need to give up their ideals of patriarchy and paternalism, indeed it’s the whole system that needs to be revolutionized (thus, all the male bankers are out flying kites at the end of the movie).

This is essentially a movie about an anarchist revolution (anarchy in the true definition of the term).

Interesting, eh?

Maternity Leave Crock

Turns out the way my company figures out maternity leave, they “gave” it to me (gee, thanks - you mean you didn’t want me to deliver in my cubicle?) by taking away all my future earned vacation time, which means that returning to work I would have only FIVE days for the rest of the year to cover illness. With two kids.

Not to mention that if I wanted to take FMLA I would go unpaid and still owe them for my medical insurance during that time.

What a crock of crap.

My neighbor across the street told me she had to return to work three weeks after having her daughter, and I’ve heard of worse.

Do employers not realize that treating people like this sucks?

What am I doing about it? Nothing. I subscribe to Moms Rising, an activist organization for these kinds of issues, but I never read it. I get angry about these kinds of things, but then I get bored with the actual issue. Isn’t that awful? I am just not the activist type of person.

I guess when faced with Issues, people fall into categories:

1) activist leaders

2) activist followers

3) journalists/reporters

4) quiet supporters who read/watch the events from afar on comfy couch

5) people who roll their eyes

6) people who look away and go back to reading/playing nintendo

7) people who are #4 but wish they were # 1 or 2 but really don’t want to be just wish they were cuz they think they’d be better people if they were.

I am SO #7.

Netflix Has Great Customer Service

They e-mailed me an apology - before I even knew that a problem had occurred.  Way to win my loyalty!! See what they sent:

We’re Sorry Your DVD Was Delayed
	Dear Amy S., As you may have heard, our shipping system was unexpectedly down for most of Monday. We should have shipped you a DVD but were unable to. Your DVD was shipped today, Tuesday, March 25th, instead. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. We will issue a 5% credit to your account in the next few days. You don’t need to do anything. The credit will be automatically applied to your next billing statement. Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1 (88 638-3549. -The Netflix Team

By the way, this is parenting-related because I have been using breastfeeding time as an excuse to catch up on old movies and tv shows via Netflix - Hulu also great - as well as reacquainting myself with Gertrude Stein, of all people!

What do you think? Feel? Think?

It’s just hormones.

We tend to think of the emotions hormones cause as being sort of fake and not genuine because they’re caused by a physical chemical, not by “real” feeling.

But what is REAL feeling?

The first time you fell in love, was it just ‘raging hormones’?

As I bond with my infant son, can I attribute the flush of tenderness I feel for him to hormones and deny their rootedness in anything dependable and real?

When are emotions real enough that we give them credence? Certainly, hormone-induced feelings spur actions - Romeo and Juliet - so we can’t discount their power or effectiveness. Well, obviously - they’re evolutionarily successful, or they wouldn’t be around, helping us mate and bond to keep the species going.

But I’m just wondering if there’s any way to really slice a line between ‘physical’ feeling and whatever the emotional feeling is that we think of as justified… somehow, I think - feel - think? that they’re all intermingled and part of each other, that hormones interact with us in such an intimate way that we can’t think of them as “other,” as merely physical, as the physical parts of ourselves as “mere” at all. Our physical bodies are us, too. 

We tend to think of our bodies as if they are cars, vehicles that carry the important stuff around inside of them, that we use but can discard - mechanical engines to be tinkered with by doctors, fueled up, revved up, but not one with the real ‘us.’

But this is a distorted view of who we are, I think. The mind-body being cannot be described as a driver in a car.

The next time you condescend to a teenager about his or her feelings, or dismiss your own rage or sadness as being worthless because attributable to your period or some other physical circumstance, back off and give those feelings the space they deserve. A little equity with the credence we give all the other emotions - which maybe deserve a little less authority over our lives… We might find ourselves taking each other and our children a little more seriously and responsibly than we do now, and that may actually help prevent Romeo-Juliet scenarios…

What do you think-feel? 

Bringing Your Daughter to Work… Everyday

I would love to do this.

I watched Waitress the other night, and the last scene that shows the mother - *spoiler alert*- gosh, I’ve always wanted to type that! - course, the movie’s been out for months - still - Anyway, the mother, having achieved her dreams and purchased the pie shop where she works skips off into the sunset, not with a man, but with her little daughter, with whom she’s been sharing her almost cosmic pie-baking knowledge, as did her mother to her - well, I was sobbing at the poignant sweetness of it, love and loss and all the rest of the Big Stuff, yadda yadda.

I wasn’t really thinking about the movie in the context of work - despite the title - the identity of a woman summed in the title of her job - until this morning, when, to answer my question of ‘what do you do all day,’ a stay at home mother friend of mine told me that she purposefully Does Her Thing and her kids do their thing or follow along/watch her do her thing.

It was a huge relief to know that this wonderful mama doesn’t spend intense one-on-one time with her children all day long. I’d been feeling (when working at home) like I needed to provide constant stimulation, and I haven’t been able to hack it. A memory of a kid’s book I read about Native Americans that showed the mothers grinding corn and the children imitating and playing right along side of her clicked on in the viewfinder of my imagination. Women have always involved their children in their work. The whole “take your daughter to work” day seems kind of silly from that angle…

However, I failed to ask what my friend what her “thing” entailed exactly. I think I was assuming it was housework. But what do you do if your thing isn’t housework? What if your thing is, like me, writing? It’s one thing to involve your toddler in an activity like mopping the floors or washing the dishes, doing yoga or painting, which we do all the time in our household. But how do I really bring my kid to work when that consists of working on the computer? She can’t really help me build a website or type a blog post in the way that she can rake leaves (ie, hop in the piles, rake aloft like a broadsword)…Every time I open up my laptop, my daughter wants to navigate to You Tube to watch Miss Piggy. Watching someone else type and click is boring. And not in a good way.

I love when my husband takes our daughter with him out on his job-related outings - at least part of his work can educate her like the kid watching his mom mush maize…

In a way, I feel kind of inspired - or conscripted - to do more domestic chores - bake bread and shine the silver - just so I am able to engage the family in my activities… but I don’t want to bake bread and shine the silver. I have a bread machine and I don’t own any silver. Not to mention I’m not sure I want my kid to remember me as Mom the Housewife. She helps Daddy cook and assists me in loading the laundry, but I can’t spend all day long in an apron. It’s not me. And it doesn’t earn any money.

Thoughts?

Even - Was a Baby

Fill in the blank.

Pick your worst enemy - Hitler, Pol Pot, the postal worker who loses your mail - and consider: This man was once an infant, probably cradled and nursed lovingly by a mother who never dreamed her tiny baby would grow up and become a dictator/monster/evil mail carrier.

I look at my newborn son and think, if I could look with love on everyone I meet with the same tenderness and compassion, the same lack of fear and defensiveness, how much my relationships would change.

There was a girl in my grad school whose work I didn’t like very much but who wrote a line I recall almost daily: “All of us were babies in the beginning.”

I’m also reminded of the scene in the movie Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby where the Will Farrell character leads his family in a dinner prayer to “Baby Jesus.” His wife gets irked because Jesus grew up, but the character says something like, “I like Baby Jesus the best, so that’s who I’m going to pray to.”

This links back to a post I wrote at Christmas - the story of the newborn child is something that can connect to and soften all of our hearts.

Try it next time you’re confronted with someone who is irritating, frustrating, even angering you - your grown child, your irksome neighbor, the jerk at the cash register - imagine him or her as a tiny baby with a fuzzy bald head - clueless, cute, harmless. See this person as a whole person. For love to be the transforming agent religion purports it to be, it must be practiced in how we see and treat each other, especially those who we think don’t deserve it. We all start out deserving love. We all need it.

And for those of you who don’t like babies, you can imagine him or her as an aged person, at the other end of the spectrum. ..

Certainly Hitl