Women’s Work Revisited

A friend of mine wrote:

“It’s so incredible what women do.  I find it metaphorically resonant that a pregnant woman looks like she’s just sitting on the couch, but she’s actually exhausting herself constructing a human being.  The laborious process of growing a human is analogous to how women’s work is seen”  (Ani Difranco from May/June Mothering mag).

Add to this idea:  A woman who looks like she is just taking the kids for a walk, just nursing the baby, just giving her child a snack - is exhausting herself creating and nurturing human beings.  How important!

And also, I don’t think of myself as a poor-me feminist, but I do agree that women’s work (in all spheres/settings: factories, fields, offices, homes) is a giant engine that is quietly turning the world, just like a pregnant mama is quietly churning a babe. Isn’t this interesting?  Why are women so humble about their achievements?

So often I find myself talking down my mother-work, speaking about my being with my children - feeding, instructing, playing with, etc. - either by

a) Not even mentioning these things in conversation, because it would seem akin to brushing my teeth - as in, “What did you do today?” “Oh, I brushed my teeth.”

b) Prefacing with “I was only” as if these things aren’t enough - though nursing a baby, for instance, is exhausting and time-consuming and requires attention - I may multitask - but that’s me being crazy - if I didn’t walk the dog/clean/type/read/read aloud while nursing, I wouldn’t be lazy…

A Taoist Approach to Parenting

Things get hard when I fight them.

I just want to get past them. I don’t want them to exist. I hate them.

All of these approaches turn tasks into boulders, thick and heavy and impossible, as I try to shove them out of the way.

While this post sat here, I read this:

Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, says that stress can be defined as wanting the present moment to be different than it is. Dr. Dr. David Simon, co-director of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Southern California, agrees. He says that stress is caused by anything getting in the way of our desires.

It’s especially hard, I find, when the Things in the Way are human beings - and when these human beings happen to be my beloved children.

Nothing gets me more frustrated than trying to get my two -year-old to do something she doesn’t want to do, like put her shoes on, pick up trash, eat, follow me up a hill - oh, it could be anything. We can’t tell if she is by nature a contrarian, or if it’s just her age (both her father and I tend to be stubbornly contrary, so if in her nature, would not be surprising) - but it is SO annoying. And it’s annoying because I face the tasks of Cleaning Up, Getting From Point A to B, Leaving the House, etc., - transition tasks - boring tasks - as themselves Pains in the Ass.

(Of course, I can hear that freaking Spoonful of Sugar whirring in the background, and it d o e s  n o t  h e l p.)

Fighting a toddler is like shoving your shoulder against a giant rock. It doesn’t work. It gets harder the more you push. I get angrier the harder it gets. I don’t want to have to work with her. I don’t want to have to -

- wait, who is sounding like a toddler now!!???

So, if taking a Taoist/Buddhist approach to these tasks that I am currently fighting so much, I think the antidote is the following:

1) Stop trying, pushing, forcing. If I think about it, toddler tends to willingly join in when I am going about my business. It may be that I need to let her join in - and let her opt out, and not stress about whether or not she is ‘doing her duty’ and if I’m ‘tough enough.’ It may also be that the alternatives to her cooperating will have to involve me waiting - doing something on my own, perhaps, but waiting.

As in, “You need to pick up your trash. I am going to go write on the computer. When you have picked up your trash, we can eat cookies and play games together.” If she dawdles, instead of yelling/steaming/boiling/pickling with frustration, I will happily be writing - and maybe she’ll do it. I mean, it may take time, but… fighting her does nothing.

2) Slow down, breathe. In order to do this, I need, for right now, to throw schedules and being on time out the window. Not always practical, but it will have to do for now. Build in extra time for everything. Go slowly. Take my time.

3) Give up the expectation and desire for total control. This may sound an awful parenting strategy, but I don’t mean it like I’m going to stop discipline or expectations. I mean that, I am not living alone. I live with a partner and an animal and children, and I can’t control them all the time. I can’t do things at my own pace. I can’t do things at will. Neither can they. It’s like driving in traffic. Everyone has to compromise and follow some agreed-upon rules so that we don’t crash into each other while doing our own thing.

Actually, the Tao te Ching makes an interesting parenting manual. I must revisit…

Bearing without possessing,
Nurturing without taming,
Shaping without forcing,
This is harmony.

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.

Finding a Cohort

So, I’m feeling like the last girl in fifth grade to get a bra.

That’s not exactly it. But sorta.

We don’t fit with anyone. Maybe what I really feel is like a hand-me-down bra.

Ok, forget the bras. Here’s the point. I don’t have any compatriot mother friends whose children’s ages match mine. It’s not a big deal, except that, with the ones with older kids, I’m watching them cruise into new heights of maturity and ease, I’m watching the mothers getting sleep and getting jobs, I’m feeling left behind in diaper land, they have Made it Through, so to speak, and I have not.

Other friends have only one kid, which means I feel saddlebagged, while they move about life with relative ease (not to say one child isn’t a hefty load, just that I feel like I’ve got extra.).

And then a few friends are just starting to have babies, and compared to them, I feel old, worn out, so far from the land of early mothering bliss that I’m like one of those saggy old ladies on those awful greeting cards that are all sarcastic and bitter and depressing.

Is this ridiculous? Do I somehow think that finding a woman with children exactly my kids’ ages would offer me comfort and relief?

Probably not. I’m thinking back a few months ago, being at a playgroup with a woman whose baby was only a couple weeks’ older than mine, our toddlers within a month of each other, and for some reason, I felt like there was this HUGE gap between her baby and my baby, and her baby was all smiley and mine was all asleep, and there were a few miserable moments of me feeling like -

well, just not fitting in.

The silly thing, of course, is that weeks and months and even years will hardly matter as time passes - none of my close friends are my age, for goodness’ sake - and with my toddler, at least, predicting a good play friend has less to do with age than with temperment.

So what’s my problem? I think, basically, I’m just experiencing a general exhaustion from parenting - with all the self-examination, self-doubt, and self-lessness it can entail. I am so happy for my friends who have gotten the hang of it - and I guess I’m worried that I never will. That they’ll leave me hanging.

Thank goodness this isn’t fifth grade!

When Did Work Start to Suck? (or has it always?)

Toddler and I at Hoos Brews today, the place empty, and she starts asking me for a real-time play-by-play of everything the kind woman behind the counter is doing - “Emptying the soup bowls,” I say, diligently. “Scooping ice cream, I think.”

“What she doing?”

“Making a smoothie, maybe.”

The woman notices, and erupts: “Enjoy your childhood, because this is work, and it sucks!”

“Yeah,” I say, sympathetically. “To kids it seems like so much fun.”

“You just wait,” she says.

And so I start thinking about my daughter’s play activities - imitating cleaning, imitating cooking, making things, pretend shopping… her playtime is all about going through the motions of what I do, what adults do, most of it perceived and experienced as drudgery… rote, boring tasks…

But what makes domestic chores burdens - and what makes a job feel like compulsory torture?

Part of it, I think, or most of it, is the compulsory piece - the fact that you have to shop, you have to clean, you have to Bring Home the Bacon, to survive - you don’t really have much of a choice. Most jobs require that you follow someone else’s rules and procedures, subverting your own ideas and questions, your own style your own imagination your own rhythms to a hierarchy that often doesn’t seem to deserve its power.

Would working in an ice cream/coffee shop be fun if it was play time? If you could do it fearlessly, lovingly?

Would your job be fun if you didn’t have to do it everyday? If you could do it your own way?

Or is it that people tend to be doing jobs they don’t like in the first place, at all, ever?

Because I don’t think the answer is that things are “hard.” Hard work that you love, that you find challenging and rewarding, can be a heck of a lot of fun. I loved studying for the SATs, for instance. I liked mastering the analogy portion of the test. I also enjoyed sweating while swinging a hammer to help build latrines at a women’s music festival. I also loved writing papers in school, having to think out hard issues and find the right words to explain and clarify my points.

On the other hand, I hate doing financial paperwork. I hate data entry. I like the challenge of typing fast. But I don’t like having to be on time to a 9-5 job. I like when I get to question how things are done and develop new, better ways to do them. I don’t like when I have to go through the motions someone else invented that feel slow and redundant.

Meaningful, engaging, fun work that makes one feel like a whole, worthy, respected, happy person - what does that require?

Why does my two year old love sweeping and mopping and I hate it??? And what do I do to reclaim my joy for the mundane and to help my child retain it as she ages?

Answer me, people!!

Chitty Chitty is Sh-tty Sh-tty

So, we do allow our toddler to watch media - short clips on Youtube of Little Bear and Miss Piggy, movies like Mary Poppins and the Muppets -  a limited number of things on video or dvd, mostly for those moments when we’re single parenting or as a special treat. We usually watch with her, talking about the show during and after. And we read to her and she reads by herself four times as much as she watches anything. So we feel okay about it.  I know some who don’t let their kids watch anything, and others whose children have their own tv. So we’re kind of in the middle, I guess.

But boy, do I feel AWFUL about exposing my child to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the other night.
I had seen reviews of the movie that put it up there with Mary Poppins in terms of its acceptability for young children. So I didn’t expect:

1) A man yelling that he was going to beat up the little kids in the opening scene

2) An unexplained missing mother - “Where’s their mommy?” my daughter kept asking worriedly -

3) The granddad making fun/putting down the father figure.

Yikes! Depressing, scary, and traumatic, and the movie was just starting…

But it was the scene where the dogs bust into the candy factory that made my daughter erupt into tears. “Where dogs?” she cried, when the next scene popped up. “No, dogs don’t eat candy!” She started wailing.

She was so upset by the dogs eating candy and getting into trouble possibly that she couldn’t sleep. At 9, 10, 11, 12 pm that night, she kept coming out of her bedroom to declare: “Dogs don’t eat candy. Dogs eat dinner.” and “I don’t like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I like Mary Poppins.”

I have apparently scarred her for life.

Which just goes to show that you cannot always predict what is going to upset a young child - and that if you’re going to let your kid watch stuff, be prepared at all times…  and don’t just go on reviews… stick with Little Bear…

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…

Yoga and Meditation… for all

I have never been able to take a post-partum baby & mommy yoga class because they are all scheduled during normal work hours.

That, or I now have two kids to drag along to a class, not just one.

So I do my personalized version of yoga-stretching-tai chi in my living room, pausing every once in a while to tend to the demands of my always-hungry infant. Or to fend off the assault of my always-running toddler.

I find the stop-start nature of this annoying, but I’m trying to go with The Flow, to keep in the spirit of things.

Forget proper meditation, though. In the morning, that is. I’ve tried setting my alarm to beat the kids to waking up - HA! What a joke! The earlier I set my alarm, the earlier they wake.

If I can get the toddler to sleep, I can usually get the baby to sleep soon thereafter, and then I can take some afternoon silent space to meditate and stretch, and boy howdy, that makes a difference. Mental and spiritual refreshment is key to helping me stay mindful, in the moment, present with my self and my children.

My friend who has a 10 month old - she teaches high school in upstate NY - took a stress-reduction class that turned out to focus on the meditation techniques of that Zabat-Zinn guy. She was told to do a 40-minute body scan every morning. What? With a baby??? She was more stressed out by trying to fit that into her life…

Still, I’m becoming a firm believer that everyone should meditate - in Britain, the NHS even subsidizes meditation programs! because of the health benefits - full-time workers, white and blue collar, poor and rich alike - but to make space for that, we’d need to have a nationwide midday siesta (you could nap, too - we all need more sleep!) - maybe in rotation to handle waking kids?

I would love to have more tai chi/yoga Gatherings - not classes you have to pay for and attend, but get togethers where people stretch and meditate together.

If I had extra time/energy, I think I would become an activist for getting more yoga, tai chi, meditation classes made available at very low costs to make them more accessible to poor / stressed/ working parents (of both genders). How about some free stuff in the parks? How about getting whole families breathing and meditating together?

So much of the conflicts and strains in our lives directly stem from stress taking control of people.

God these hormones are like drugs. I’m turning into a hippie.