This is a cross-post from my main blog, Obscure CanLit Mama, but seems particularly applicable to Moms Are Feminists Too.
Wow. Some really interesting changes are taking place in my life right now. Changes are causing some conflict, and also opening up opportunities for discussion and potentially radical shifts (though I suspect these will be slow and steady rather than sudden and shocking).
This year, I've focused on my spirit, and that's taken me to places of quiet reflection and also drawn out of me greater confidence and courage. My family has been noticing this is round-about ways, as I head out early in the morning to go for a run, learn how to swim, take time to bury myself in writing, head out as soon as supper's on the table in order to take a yoga class, or set up the tripod and camera; all things that I am doing on my own, that don't necessarily connect to their lives, and that might actually exclude them in one way or another.
My husband and I have been struggling to find, in the midst of this extra-curricular activity, time to spend together. This morning it occurred to us that this is a problem of home economics. My husband was the one who made this observation, not me. He observed that I am responsible for the bulk of the domestic work, and if I add in other work, whether or not it is of the paying variety, it means that my time becomes more and more squeezed. So I am writing down a list of all the domestic/household labour that I do (and that he does, too), with the idea that we work to split it more evenly, and also among the children, to some degree.
It's quite a list.
Thinking about sharing this work, and therefore having time to focus more freely on the triathlon project and writing generally, brought me to a new revelation: I think part of me wanted to go back to school to train to be something else because then my time would be accounted for, my work outside the home acknowledged as important, and the family obligated to pick up (some) slack--because I wouldn't always be there to do it for them, and with good reason. It is a little fantasy of mine to imagine children packing lunches for school and getting their own snacks after school, and then tidying up. (I did say it was a fantasy).
My husband admitted that he has fallen into gender stereotyping--well, we both have. He works and earns the money, and I keep the home fires a'burning. Except I also try to squeeze in a side career (I am a writer), and it is indeed very squeezed. Partly this is practical: because he earns the money that keeps us afloat, his work-time isn't optional, and mine, with its occasional grant/prize windfalls and trickle of odd-job cheques is nowhere near enough to feed and house a family of six. So, the divide has made sense. But we've also become trapped by it, and blind to it. Because of course my work will never add up to much if I can't commit to or pursue freelance jobs that would require even moderate time commitment over and above what I've already carved out. And fiction writing is the kind of business that demands long-term investment, a risky investment at best. But without investment, it will add up to precisely nothing.
So, our question now is: how to go forward, treating what I do, outside of domestic duties, as work worthy of more time, and energy?
