JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Joan K. Peters is the author of a highly regarded book called When Mothers Work: Loving Our Children Without Sacrificing Our Selves. It proceeds from an assumption dear to many women’s hearts: “I argue that mothers should work outside the home,” she tells us at the outset. “If they do not, they cannot preserve their identities or raise children to have both independent and family lives.” (Good news for sweatshop workers and their children everywhere—Mom’s identity as an underpaid seamstress is vital to healthy family functioning.) HSSWM

But staying at home with children is boring and hard for the “beautifully educated”. Activities include watching daytime TV, tidying the house and making cookies. She states she would rather talk to a working mother than a mom who stays at home. Days at home caring for her children fill her with resentment and frustration.

It’s hard to be a beautifully educated woman, used to the power and autonomy of work, and suddenly be plunged into the Romper Room of round the clock mommy-hood. I must confess—and you’re never supposed to say this—I’d rather sit next to the working mom at a dinner party than the at-home mom. The working mom would have more to say that would be of interest to me. TMD .

The other day, I was early to pick the boys up from school, so I went to the parents’ lounge to read a book. Slowly the room filled up with five or six other mothers. They were all at-home moms, and they were all in charge of a class Valentine’s party. They were talking about the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches they were going to make, and the heart-shaped cookie cutters they were going to use, and they were talking about how to deal with the teacher’s decision that they couldn’t bring any candy to the party. Listening in on the conversation as an outsider, I could see how a working mom might make fun of them—it certainly wasn’t the kind of conversation you hear at important places of business or in hospitals or universities. It also made me see very clearly why some women say they simply have to go to work or they would sink into depression. TMD .

I had expected, merely upon the simple fact of giving birth, to be magically transformed from the kind of woman who likes to spend most of the morning lying on the couch reading and drinking coffee and talking on the telephone to the kind of woman who likes to spend most of the morning tidying up and thinking about what to cook for dinner and inviting other mothers over for a nice chat. It didn’t happen. Play dates—a sort of minimum-security lockdown spent in the company of other mildly depressed women and their tiresome, demanding babies—brought on a small death of the spirit, the effects of which I feared might be cumulative. I also felt resentful and sometimes even furious about almost any domestic task that presented itself: why was I supposed to endlessly wipe down the kitchen counters and lug bags of garbage out to the cans and set out the little plastic plates of steamed carrots and mashed bananas that the children touched only in order to hurl them onto the floor? Hadn’t every essay I’d ever submitted in college come back with a little mash note telling me I was in some way special, a cut above, meant for something? Wasn’t I designed for more important things than putting away Lego blocks and loading the dishwasher? I was! It was time. HSSWM

So what’s the solution? Go to work. Hire help to do the dogwork.

I have never once argued with my husband about which of us was going to change the sheets of the marriage bed, but then—to my certain knowledge —neither one of us ever has changed the sheets. Or scrubbed the bathtubs, or dusted the cobwebs off the top of the living-room bookcase, or used the special mop and the special noncorrosive cleanser on the hardwood floors. Two years ago our little boys got stomach flu, one right after the other, and there were ever so many loads of wash to do, but we did not do them. The nanny did. HSSWM

When I first hired a nanny, all I could think was, I need some help here! And fast! I found myself completely unsuited to the task of running a household, which was a cause of shame for me. My mother had done it so gracefully, and the one goal I’d always set for myself was to be a good wife and mother, but I really felt I was flailing. By modern standards, I suppose, I was doing fine: I spent huge amounts of time with the babies and I delighted in them, but it was impossible for me to do that and also keep the place clean and cook and lead any kind of adult life. TMD .

[…] there was still a heck of a lot of housework and child care that simply couldn’t be streamlined. HSSWM

As one professional woman said, “Good help and lots of it is key to making the whole thing possible.” HSSWM

I can remember waiting somewhere -dentist’s office, doctor’s office? – when my third baby was little. I had all my kids crowded into my lap. Another mom sitting there by herself in the chair looked over at me and said she remembered her days with three small children.
“Any advice?” I asked, eager to learn.
“Get help.” She replied. And I think she meant Help. As in hire Help.

The making of an American marriage: Help!

Caitlin Flanagan’s descriptions of the lives of many women – and thereby families – looks a bit like this:

1) hire someone to clean the house
2) hire someone to care for the children
3) hire someone to cook the meals

One can imagine this list continuing to a variety of services. Love for hire. (nannies = “women are buying this love when they need it, as though it were a commodity”TMD ) Laundry for hire. Lawn work for hire.

Life becomes a series of service transactions:

They prefer to think of themselves as consumers of a service—and consumers, of course, have no obligation or responsibility to what they consume. In such a perspective, the relationship may seem cleaner, less encumbered: a sterile transaction of cash for services. HSSWM

(Even the nomenclature suggests why a woman anxious about her choices in life wouldn’t like day care: a good mother doesn’t want to admit to having to make “deliveries” and “pickups” of her children, as though they were so many dirty shirts being sent to the laundry.) HSSWM

Caitlin Flanagan quotes the advice Anita Diamont and her husband were given for their marriage difficulties:

By way of “homework” the therapist suggested several commonsense gimmicks. We were to spend ten minutes each evening debriefing about our respective days. We were to take turns and not interrupt each other. He also suggested regular sex dates. Sounds mechanical, but it sure takes the pressure off the rest of the week. And for heaven’s sake, said the therapist, if you’re fighting about who cleans the bathroom, why not just pay someone else to do it for you? HSSWM

Schedule sex, schedule conversation, schedule the housecleaner…
married love turns into a list of services provided and paid.

What is modern American marriage and motherhood? It’s about money.

Caitlin Flanagan quotes Ann Crittenden’s complaint of how much money she lost when she chose to stay at home with her child:

We learn of Crittenden’s own plight on leaving The New York Times to raise her child: “very conservatively, I lost between $600,000 and $700,000, not counting the loss of a pension.” HSSWM

Via Scripting News, I saw Dare Obasanjo’s story describing how a woman turned down her boyfriend’s proposal, after he surprised her with a ring:

After a stunned silence she took it, said some words softly then said “I appreciate the sentiment but the timing is inappropriate” and handed it back. This was followed by her voicing her concerns about his ability to support them and him rattling of how much he made a month plus various bonuses, etc. I think it went downhill from there.

Did this couple love each other or was their relationship centered on money, how much he made?

What matters most is money – to pay for all the services!

What did Caitlin Flanagan want when she wanted marriage?

“When I was in high school, I didn’t even plan on going to college. I wanted to go to community college, live at home, and then get married.” TMD
I wonder what she was imagining for her family life. I never dreamed about getting married or having babies. I had planned for a career track heading on a different train. Falling in love with my husband – and with God – changed my mind and my course in life. Yet this author says she wanted marriage, but she seems dissatisfied with being at home with her children.

Saying “I Do” to Dogwork: Love is in the little things

Here’s where I get confused. Caitlin Flanagan has already described how intolerable “dogwork” is, so much so that many women hire nannies and other help to do it for them, yet she also writes how it is these daily chores that create bond between parent and child.

To con oneself into thinking that the person who provides daily physical care to a child is not the one he is going to love in a singular and primal way—a way obviously designed by nature herself to cleave child to mother and vice versa—is to ignore one of the most fundamental truths of childhood. Just as women, often despite their fervent desires to the contrary, tend to fall in love with the men they sleep with, so do small children develop an immediate and consuming passion for the person who feeds and rocks and bathes them every day. It’s in the nature of the way they experience love. HSSWM

Love means I take care of my daughter every day. I do a lot of little things for her. I change the wet sheets and wipe the floor. I give her a bath and brush her teeth.

Love is cleaning spilled teriyaki sauce out of the refrigerator, as Halley Suitt was doing last night after her son had made a mess.

Love also means I care for my husband: making him tea, cooking something he’ll enjoy eating after a long day of work and cleaning his clothes. I want to do these things for my family. I love them.

Sure it’s not always exciting. I have my moments when I wonder is it worth it?. When I feel like a cow or like a dog. But all of life has tedious times. Even paid employment, work in an office. When I was employed outside the home, I did some “dogwork” there too.

Marriage is not McDonald’s. Or rather Burger King – with their motto of “Have It Your Way”. It’s not buying a burger, going and ordering What You Want. It’s not something that can be dictated and determined evenly, as in the marriage contracts Caitlin Flanagan also cites. It’s not equal.

Lisa Williams shares her wisdom about marriage in a recent post:

That’s the strange thing about marriage, and something that’s been difficult for me to learn: it’s not always an equal partnership. In fact, trying to make sure that your contributions — monetary, emotional, physical, temporal — are always scrupulously equal may in fact damage your marriage. Because it’s not a commercial transaction or a business partnership, and shouldn’t be treated like one. I thought to myself, if both of us are determined to remain utterly independent, and not have or accept influence on each other, then why did we get married?

Love is not a business transaction. Marriage is not about money or making everything equal all the time.

Love is in the little things. The things that are done for each other. Not a 50/50 split where someone’s keeping track: your turn now.

Love is when Lisa schedules a hair cut for her husband.

Love is in the moments when I make our bed. Wash our clothes. Do the dishes.

What will the kids remember from their childhood? How we went on big vacations or had fancy holidays? No, I suspect our daughters will remember what we did every day. That’s what I remember from my childhood. I liked going to the beach or driving to the mountains. But what made the most impression on me was how we lived each day, how we ate dinner together, how we worked together, what we did before bedtime, how we felt loved in little moments.

So I sense some confusion in Caitlin Flanagan: how she doesn’t like the dogwork yet she sees the value in it.
“Raising a small child is so intimate, and the care itself produces a bond of tremendous intensity.”TMD . True, but why is she unwilling to do the work that builds the intimacy?

A note here on dads and dogwork. Often domestic duties such as cooking and cleaning can become a matter of contention between a couple. Ted can cook. He does diapers. He helps me with the children. The other night I went out and he did a number of domestic duties, including putting the cover back on the sofa, much better than I would have done it myself. My fault is that too often I do his jobs for him; I feel I’m helping him when he would be happy to do his part. If I ask him for help, he’ll help me. I am willing to do the housework. In order for us to have family time every night after dinner, it’s best if Ted can enjoy the children before their bedtime without housework to do. So I am happy to cook, clean and do the laundry. To me, it’s the least I can do for what he does for us all day and all week long at his work.

In this attitude I think I agree with Caitlin Flanagan here:

Whenever my husband walks through the door after work, I always make a point of saying, “We’re so glad to see you!” Because work is hard and draining, and home should be a pleasure. People are so confused about this—they think work is the pleasure and home is the burden.TMD

I want my husband to have plenty of pleasure at home with our family when he is done with his work day.

What Dogwork Does for Us

The girls and I do housework together. I like to think we’re making many good memories too. Even if we could afford the money (hundreds, probably thousands of dollars a year) for a nanny or housekeeper to take care of our home, I don’t think we’d pay someone to do it. What we learn from our times together scrubbing the floors or folding laundry is worth more than money.

I want my girls to know how to keep a house so that they can take care of themselves. If we could pay for a housecleaner, I’d still want them to know how to do it in case they grew up and found themselves in a different income level, unable to afford to pay for housecleaners. Expectations for adulthood begin in childhood, and kids grow up expecting to have the same level of affluence when they are adults, learning the lifestyle and habits.

I also feel I am teaching the girls how to be responsible: they each have chores assigned to do. They are learning how to do a thorough job – I come and check what work they have done. They are learning about consequences: what gets dirtied must get cleaned. They are also discovering how each of them has a part to play, a way to contribute in the family, even Elisabeth sorting the silverware: the joy of a job. Each of us gives to the family. On Monday afternoons we have our housecleaning time for the week. We laugh and play loud music. It’s fun to work together as a family. They are learning too.

So I find I disagree with Caitlin Flanagan about “dogwork”, what it is and who should do it.

Which brings me to my second point: Motherhood Means I Use My Mind. Caitlin Flanagan associates staying-at-home with watching TV, making cookies and tidying the house. It seems to her that life at home is boring and lacking intellectual engagement or excitement.

I like to bake. I like to decorate. I clean. At times I do these things. Inside me are so many ideas, observations, thoughts, simmering during the day. Being at home with my children is incredibly fascinating. And intellectual. There are myriad opportunities for engaging my mind.

To raise children, a mother – and father – need to know what it is that they are doing. What is the work before them. What makes a person? What makes our world what it is? What does it mean to be a member of society? Who do we want our girls to be when they are women? How do we want them to participate and change the world around them? What kind of country and culture is influencing us as a family? What kind of world will be awaiting my children in twenty years? How can we prepare them? What is education? How should we school our children? Philosophy, psychology, physiology, physics. Economics and mechanics. History and politics. Perpetual studies for parents.

There are intense intellectual questions parents need to be able to answer. If all one wants is simple survival, getting through the day, then changing diapers, wiping spills and spooning food into faces will suffice. But I feel there is an incredible vista, a huge horizon, all kinds of challenges for the intellect and mind as a mom.

I believe that who my child will be when she is 18 years old, adult and able to vote, begins when she is 18 months old, or even younger.

Do I want my daughter to be responsible? Respectful? Generous? Those traits begin to grow now, in infancy, and no nanny can nuture these seeds inside her heart better than me, her mother.

I may have left the office but that doesn’t mean I left my mind in the office. I brought my mind home with me. It is constantly employed!

Caitlin Flanagan’s essays and descriptions of her days at home with her small children seem devoid of joy. Where’s the fun of dancing around the living room with your babies? Throwing mud pies? Hiking in the woods and discovering ferns and flowers? Why is it so tiresome and depressing to her? I wish she had written more about the happiness of being at home. I stay at home with my girls because we have FUN!

Choice and Ambivalence

If Caitlin Flanagan is confused or ambivalent about her choices as a mother, I can understand. Slavery can be misery. But being given choices sometimes only makes life more complicated and difficult.

Ambivalence is a mark of motherhood. So many sets and subsets of decisions, many of them difficult to determine: work? don’t work? work at home? work at the office? work part-time? full-time? company? consulting? day care? nanny?

Women can decide how, when, where and with whom to become a mother. Yet there are still aspects of life that can’t be controlled. And sometimes what seems to be the best path to take doesn’t end up where it was expected to go.

I find myself feeling ambivalent and ambiguous about motherhood, in a different way. Or perhaps it’s not so different. The other night when we went out for sushi at last, after years of waiting, I found myself in tears by the end of the meal. What I discovered was not simply my repulsion to raw abalone, but my own emotions about my new freedom as a mother, the sushi symbolizing a new stage. I love being able to go out alone with my husband for a lengthy date and being able to eat whatever I want without worrying about a baby depending on my body. Yet I miss pregnancy and breastfeeding: I love babies. After our infertility , I never thought we’d be making choices about children. It’s a difficult place to be for me.

And sometimes it seems easy to make a choice, just as I was willing to try the abalone, but when I tasted it, it wasn’t what I imagined it would be at all.

She can’t have both things

To end this piece, I’ll quote a few of the paragraphs in the end of her esssay, describing choice:

What few will admit—because it is painful, because it reveals the unpleasant truth that life presents a series of choices, each of which precludes a host of other attractive possibilities—is that when a mother works, something is lost. Children crave their mothers. They always have and they always will. HSSWM

I agree.

And women fortunate enough to live in a society where they have access to that greatest of levelers, education, will always have the burning dream of doing something more exciting and important than tidying Lego blocks and running loads of laundry. HSSWM

Here I don’t agree with her assumption that educated women will be bored at home. It sounds as if we women will know we are “fortunate” by our dissatisfaction. Yet she has also defined this dogwork as love. Being at home is exciting: I disagree.

If you want to make an upper-middle-class woman squeal in indignation, tell her she can’t have something. If she works she can’t have as deep and connected a relationship with her child as she would if she stayed home and raised him. She can’t have the glamour and respect conferred on career women if she chooses instead to spend her days at “Mommy and Me” classes. She can’t have both things. HSSWM

I agree again here. Hit the nail on the head. And very American. It comes back to the McDonald’s marriage. I want to believe I can have it all. Don’t tell me I can’t. In this age of sex and contraception, fast food and Atkins diet, credit card debt and consumption, we want to have everything: all choice and no consequence. All happiness and no heartache.

A few weeks ago I overheard a working mom saying to another mom: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” A fact few remember in our society. Girls are brought up to believe they can be SuperWoman with the life of their dreams, Cinderella Stage Coach, professional degree and nanny. Oh and handsome Prince to boot. Can’t leave him out of the equation. No pumpkins. The glass slipper fits forever. That’s why it’s a fairy tale.

But I believe the way to have your fairy tale come true, to have your cake and eat it too, is to make a choice. Choose what it is you can have. Be content.

How Caitlin Flanagan saved my marriage and motherhood

After reading these two pieces by Caitlin Flanagan, I found myself thinking about Choice. I thought about the choices I made. What I wanted. Some I made before marriage, deciding the type of life I wanted as a wife, who I’d want as a husband. Ted and I have made deliberate decisions to have the life we have now. Yes, I whine and complain at times. I have my moments when I am unhappy.

Yet the more I thought about Choice, the more I realized that I have chosen this life I have now. And I realized that I want it. I Want It. I want it dogwork and all.

I want to be at home with my girls. I want to take care of Ted. Spilled milk, loads of laundry and all the little labors! This is what I want. I like my life! I’ve felt extra energy, enthusiasm, empowered by this realization. Empowered by my choice. The little labors, dogwork, diapers, wiping spills, scrubbing dishes, haven’t bothered me in the week since I’ve read Flanagan’s words. I want what I have as a woman. I’ve got my cake and it’s sweet to eat. I’m happy to be a wife and a mom at home all day.

Call me a serf. I’ll be a slave. Love is serfdom.