Responses

Just wanted to alert you to responses to our questionnaire, which continue to trickle in. Enjoy. There's lots to chew on.

What to Pretend

I love Amy Poehler. Here's what she said about motherhood in an interview in the Dec./Jan. 2010 issue of Bust magazine: "There's an unwritten rule that women who stay at home are supposed to pretend it's boring, and women who work are supposed to pretend they feel guilty, and that's how it works."

Women and Writing

Read this essay from The Guardian online, by Rachel Cusk, on women and writing. I'll quote a passage from it:

When a woman in 2009 sits down to write, she perhaps feels rather sexless. She is inclined neither to express nor deny: she'd rather be left alone to get on with it. She might even nurture a certain hostility towards the concept of "women's writing". Why should she be politicised when she doesn't feel politicised? It may even, with her, be a point of honour to keep those politics as far from her prose as it is possible to get them. What compromises women – babies, domesticity, mediocrity – compromises writing even more. ... Her own life is one of freedom and entitlement, though her mother's was probably not. Yet she herself is not a man. She is a woman: it is history that has brought about this difference between herself and her mother. She can look around her and see that while women's lives have altered in some respects, in others they have remained much the same. She can look at her own body: if a woman's body signifies anything, it is that repetition is more powerful than change. But change is more wondrous, more enjoyable. It is pleasanter to write the book of change than the book of repetition. In the book of change one is free to consider absolutely anything, except that which is eternal and unvarying. "Women's writing" might be another name for the book of repetition.

Domesticity, babies, our bodies. Repetition; change. Are we circling perpetually around the same questions and problems of how to balance our own lives and needs while meeting the needs of those for whom we are responsible because what underlies these questions does not change? Because we are our bodies.

Twenty Years

I found this interview with Nathalie Provost, in the Globe and Mail, very moving. Ms. Provost survived the shooting at the Ecole Polytechnique, which happened twenty years ago. She is protesting the federal government's proposed changes to the long-gun registry.
According to the Globe and Mail, 5.6 percent of victims murdered by hand-guns are women; 41.1 percent of victims murdered by long-guns are women.

How Does She Do It?

How does she do it?

How does the Perfect Mom manage to care for her children 24 hours a day, cook fresh and healthy meals from scratch, source her food locally, keep her house tidy and clean, launder her family's clothing, arrange regular doctor and dentist appointments, read books to her children, spend special time with each individual child, ferry children to after-school activities, cope with conflict creatively, stay patient and calm amidst the great and constant storm of chaos, spend meaningful and romantic time with her partner, and even do paid work on occasion? Oh, and still make space to nurture herself.

I ask because this is the kind of mom I strive to be. And because we're all familiar with that Perfect Mom ideal. We're bombarded with images of her.

I also ask because it's the kind of mom that I'm not.

I'm not against setting the bar high. I want to learn and achieve and strive to do better. But when I look at that list of Perfect Mom achievements, it becomes really clear that the ideal is not just impossible, but improbable, even mythical.

There is no way, for example, to do paid work while caring for children. I might be able to involve my children (with effort and time lost and extra mess afterward) in helping to cook a meal, but I can't involve them in helping me write a story (my paid work). In fact, as anyone knows who's ever chased a toddler around house, in order to do that work, I need my children to be elsewhere entirely, being looked after by someone else (though the television is also an occasionally effective babysitter). Which completely nixes the possibility of Perfect Mom-dom.

In fact, the answer to how does she do it? is: She doesn't. Those of us who occasionally look like we're achieving the impossible are working with smoke and mirrors. We're magicians of special effects. We're faking it.

And I wonder whether there's something intrinsically wrong with that, have we created an image of motherhood that is both alluring and ultimately disappointing. And yet ...

I strongly dislike wallowing, complaining, whining. I think negativity is corrosive and infects others, too. Part of my mothering goal is to be as positive as possible, to create an optimistic family culture, to live inside even the most difficult situations and cope with grace and humour. To forgive my own mistakes and be careful not to judge others, too.

Part of faking it is reminding myself of what is possible.

But maybe I should be reminding myself that there's an imperfect human being behind the curtain. And sharing that conflicted, often harassed and frustrated self.

Are those ideals even my own, at heart? Really? How do I know?

One more question: Is there a Perfect Dad?

Valuing Unpaid Work

It strikes me that there are a couple of separate but related issues when trying to parse the issues of motherhood and work.

One: women do two-thirds of the unpaid work that keeps our economy whisking along. Why? Why isn't the burden shared more equally?

Two: this work is not highly valued. Does that partially answer the questions above?

Now, an unacknowledged truth is that much of this unpaid work is genuinely fulfilling and meaningful. Many of us choose to do it because we love it. I love to cook. I love spending time with my children. So does it follow, then, that because we love it and because it is meaningful it shouldn't be paid?

That's where I take issue with the logic. I think women, and mothers in particular, are sold this idea that we're damned lucky to be mothers, and if we can afford to stay home, we're even luckier, that this is proof of our upper-middle-class values, and it's a luxury no one should complain about, and on and on and on. And while I agree--yes, I'm extremely fortunate to have been able to afford to stay home, and I'm privileged to be a mother--I question the reasoning that suggests that my privilege disqualifies me from addressing inequities. So, I've decided not to shut up just because I'm lucky.

Much as I love caring for my children and looking after the household duties, I would gratefully share more of these duties--and their meaningfulness and joys, as well as their burdens. It shouldn't only be those most fortunate who get to choose to stay home with their children. And really good childcare should be available and affordable for everyone. (Aside: Those two previous sentences are not in opposition to each other. Choice is the key). (Aside # 2: Somehow we seem more willing to swallow that idea if we're told it's Early Childhood Education, which is fine with me, but I wish we'd be willing to swallow the idea that good and loving childcare is valuable enough to be worth investing in).

A few modest proposals: Increase parental leave time to two years. Increase payments. Make parental leave available to everyone (I was unable to access it, being self-employed). Publicly fund a variety of childcare options, including in-home care, and preschool, daycare, and after-school programming at neighbourhood public schools, which could also house early years centres to support parents. Communities are stronger when we know each other. Families are stronger when we have a larger network of support to access.

Why is this a feminist issue? Because women do the bulk of this labour. Simple as that.

"Why Is Feminism Still So Divisive?"

Please please please read this New Yorker article by Ariel Levy. It is on the very subject this blog is struggling with--how much feminism has achieved for women, and yet how we've utterly failed to address the thorny issues of motherhood, work, and caring for children. The article's final couple of paragraphs darn near knocked me flat. Did you know that in the United States, in 1971, both houses of Congress passed a non-partisan bill that would have made after-school care and early childhood education available on a sliding scale of tuition--to everyone who wished to access it, without making it mandatory for anyone? And the bill has been lost to history and all but forgotten because later that same year Richard Nixon vetoed it, and that opportunity was buried.

"So close," Levy writes. "And now so far. The amazing journey of American women is easier to take pride in if you banish thoughts about the roads not taken. When you consider all those women struggling to earn a paycheck while rearing their children, and start to imagine what might have been, it’s enough to make you want to burn something."

Thanks to Susan for passing the link to this article on to me.
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P.S. I've added a link to the questionnaire to the right.