Year in Review, Part 1: Work

I've been craving a reason to write something slightly brainier than "Here's a picture of my cute daughter!", but let's be honest; most of my brain is, in fact, occupied with All Things Lea. That's just the way it is. So, a compromise: I'm going to spend the next month or so reflecting on where I was a year ago, and what has changed since then-- for me, my family, and the little creature who has changed all of us so profoundly. I'm also hoping to do some deeper thinking about some bigger issues relating to motherhood and childcare.

Part of the reason Big Changes are so heavy on my mind right now is because just last week when I was in Pennsylvania, I went in to visit my old place of work at Habitat Philadelphia, and realized that it's been just about exactly a year since my last day of work. October 28th, 2006 was the last day I got up in the morning and went to work. Wow. I have officially had ZERO income for a year now.

Here's something funny: I remember when I was in 8th grade, I was in a community theatre production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I was having a discussion with another girl in the play, Lauren, about our future goals. She said, "Well, I only have two things I know for sure I definitely want to do sometime in the future: play Maria in West Side Story and get married." I surprised myself by answering "Hey! All I want to do is play ________ in ________ and get married!" (Who knows the answer?)

But wait. Let me clarify. I don't mean to say that at 14 years old, I thought the key to my future fulfillment was simply to find a husband and rock the best non-dancing female lead in all of musical theatre. I knew I would want to do other things, including to pursue some kind of professional career. But the question then, as now, remains: what?

I'm trying not to put a ton of pressure on myself to figure it all out real quickly, but I must say that having a child complicates things in a huge way. There are some days when I kind of think that if I had established myself on a definite career path pre-Lea, I would be itching to re-enter that path right about NOW. She's less mom-dependent, physically and otherwise, and I'm starting to feel a certain brain atrophy. I miss being challenged intellectually and working with other adults. I miss problem-solving.

Then there are other days when I can't imagine myself committing long-term to any career that will make it distinctly challenging to be present, emotionally and physically, for the huge variety of things my child might need me for. A few weeks ago I found myself weeping to Brian that I want to be able to make Lea's Cogsworth costume for her sixth grade play like my mother did for me. (Actually, let's put it out there: I hope Lea gets to be Belle, dammit.) How will I do that if I'm a nurse-midwife or a fulltime teacher? Or, um, anything really? How would I possibly be able to find time for big projects like that when I am so easily undone by a hectic schedule, and an array of demands on my time as simple as basic housework? I know it can be done, of course; I've seen it done. It's just daunting.

Here's another thing I've been mulling: childcare. Let's discuss my Number One Gripe with my otherwise beloved feminist movement: the devaluing of childcare. I don't like it. I don't like that there are still feminist leaders like Linda Hirshman out there saying that an educated woman who chooses to be a full-time parent is an affront to the whole cause. That's BS. Here's why: somebody has to care for all these children. The work must be done. If you're going to imply that the work is beneath degree-holding women (by saying, like Hirshman, that "an educated, competent adult's place is in the office")-- that they owe it to the world to do something "more"-- then what are you saying about the people (women, 99% of the time) who make their living doing childcare? I guess they're an affront as well, because the work is so lowly, right? Or are those women who work as daycare providers to be excluded from the feminist movement altogether because their place of work is a nursery, not an office? Or what?

It makes me think of one particular bit of my favorite recent read, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which chronicles the Kingsolver family's quest to eat only locally-grown and -raised foods for one year, and along with that, to put a finger on just what America's "food culture" is. Let me sidestep the issue of childcare to let Kingsolver make my point for me as she discusses a similar post-feminist issue: food.

"I belong to the generation of women who took as our youthful rallying cry: Allow us a good education so we won't have to slave in the kitchen. We recoiled from the proposition that keeping a husband presentable and fed should be our highest intellectual aspiration. We went to school, sweated those exams, earned our professional stripes...

... It's a reasonable proposition. But it got twisted into a pathological food culture. When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. "Hey, ladies," it said to us, "go ahead, get liberated. We'll take care of dinner." They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply...

... When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable. I consider it the great hoodwink of my generation. "

A hoodwink it is: in order to convince the world that women should have options beyond homekeeping, certain thinkers of the feminist movement (which, let me reiterate that it is one that I place tremendous value in) have taken the route of devaluing the work that must be done to keep people clothed and fed and nurtured. And I find this sad, and I find myself constantly apologizing-- with my tone of voice or a shrug or the hurried way I answer the question "What do you do?"-- for work that I know is vital to a functional society.

Kingsolver laments the pathological food culture she sees all around her. I am very glad to say that I do not think our child-rearing culture is in nearly such dire straits, and that I do see creative solutions to the childcare/feminism conundrum. But for some families, the solution is going to be a mother who serves as a full-time parent, sometimes for 2 months, sometimes for 20 years. And I want that to be okay, not just for my own comfort every time I engage in small-talk, but because I think that the right way to approach this as a feminist is to embrace a tradition where every woman-- and man-- can evaluate the options available to them without seeing child-rearing as a pursuit less meaningful or less worthy than the rest.

That said, I will repeat: I miss using higher-order thinking skills. I go absolutely wild for a project that will require some creative problem solving (do you remember the fervor with which I described my solutions to our plumbing and flea emergencies? It felt good to tackle something that demanded a bit of planning and cleverness on my part). Baby-care is mundane. But the real sticking point is that it is often simultaneously totally predictable and impossible to plan around. What I mean is, most days consist of a pretty limited variety of activities: take short walks. read board books. play with blocks. plop Lea in pack-n-play with wooden spoon while I cook. go outside and grab leaves. stroll laps through Target. But in spite of the predictability, it's very hard to know ahead of time what I will be doing at, say, 2:30 tomorrow afternoon. Plans are constantly changing if Lea is cranky or hyper or tired, or if we got stuck in traffic earlier and she already spent way too much time in her carseat, or if she has a runny nose and time outdoors seems like a bad idea. The goals are (in order of priority): to keep her happy and stimulated, keep me sane, and if possible, keep the house somewhat clean (please note that this is a very distant third for me).

It's challenging in ways going to an office every day never was. I go long stretches of time not speaking to another adult, and I can't tell you how much I would love to be able to take a 15-minute tea break twice a day like I used to. And I miss having a paycheck and a little more financial freedom. But I love being here to try to interpret Lea's increasingly-language-like babbling, and to watch her study textures and make sense of books. I love policing Lea/cat encounters ("gentle! be gentle!"), and taking her to story time at the library. What I really love right now is having the time to continue to breastfeed without the logistical nightmare of pumping and storing, to make pretty nutritious meals, to save money by using cloth diapers, to walk around our beautiful town, and in general, to feel like we're living a decently healthy life. I like the pace of my life in a lot of ways, and I think a lot of these things would be much harder to do if getting myself to and from a job, and getting Lea to and from daycare, were added to the mix.

So here I am, smack in the middle of life as a stay-at-home mother, and wondering what's next. I literally do not stop thinking about these questions, evaluating the possibilities for how I may or may not pursue a profession sometime in the next few years. I guess that's the second hoodwink at play here: the self-reflection that can be so inescapable when you feel pulled towards two paths that seem unavoidably divergent. Maybe I underestimate myself. Maybe I underestimate all women, I don't know. Do I need to turn in my feminist card now?

Whatever. I'm keeping it. It doesn't feel like a contradiction in terms to vehemently defend my choice of a current job as well as my right to choose something else whenever it makes sense for me and my family. And I suppose it's fitting that I close with a sentiment echoed by every feminist before me: may it be just a little bit easier for my daughter.