What I Should Be Doing Instead

Work-family balance isn't an artisanal cheese

2012-01-15T10:46:00.000-08:00

Midway through an engaging bookreview by David Remnick in the Jan. 16 NewYorker, I happened upon a brief but disturbingremark.

Remnick, who is editor of the magazine, was reviewing Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas, but the remark in question had little directly to do with theFirst Couple. Here is the significant paragraph (emphasis added on the disturbingpart):

Insome respects, the Obamas resemble a post-sixties version of the Clintons. Theyare graduates of some of the richest institutions in the country. In Hyde Park,they lived among other highly educated, liberal, earnestly well-meaning, andself-regarding people, with all the requisiteconcerns about “family-career balance,” “doing good and doing well.” Theylived with the small hypocrisies and pleasures of their milieu, bringingtogether some hyper-wealthy friends and unabashedly progressive causes. It is aliberal aesthetic raised to a style of life.

By “family-careerbalance,” Remnick apparently means what’s more commonly called “work-familybalance” or “work-life balance”—that is, management of the competing demands ofjobs and childcare. Since those responsibilities sometimes conflict to the pointof being mutually prohibitive, work-family balance is indeed a requisiteconcern for many people. Especially for women, who tend to shoulder a greaterportion of the “family” part of the equation and sacrifice economically becauseof it, but also for men, who often feel more pressure to prioritize work and consequentlymiss out on time with their kids (both of which scenarios probably apply to theObamas, come to think of it).

But look how Remnick presentsthe term, framed with scare quotes amid wry phrases like “earnestlywell-meaning, and self-regarding” and “small hypocrisies and pleasures.” Requisite,of course, literally means necessary. But Remnick is suggesting that in thiscase the necessity isn’t quite real, that the concerns are a puffed-up productof class expectations. He implies that “family-career balance” is a fashionableissue over which the privileged and progressive may furrow their brows as amatter of propriety, not a really source of serious tension in their glamorous lives.

As if figuring outhow to both do your job and raise your kids were a task on the order of, oh, selectingan artisanal cheese.

Esther Fein and David Remnick

Remnick isn’t being mean-spirited; his précis is only lightlysardonic, not to mention otherwise spot-on. (Don’t you just know people likethat, even if those in your orbit rank somewhere below the Obamas? Heck, I’ve hadneighbors whom this describes to a T except for the “hyper-wealthy” part.) He pokesfriendly fun at those people—and, implicitly, at himself. The New Yorker is politically liberal, arguablythe country’s most esteemed periodical, and famously well-paying. As editor, Remnickoccupies the same sort of glittering, left-leaning environment he gently mocks.

He is also a husband (to New York Times reporter Esther Fein), andfather of three children.

Who knows how the Remnick-Fein household handles its child-caringduties. Maybe for whatever reason the matter has never posed much of a problem,despite the parents’ demanding careers. A 2006 profileof Remnick in the Guardian (back whenhis sons were teenagers and his daughter seven) depicts his family stuff as ordinarybut remarkably stress-free: “He does his fair share of ferrying to music lessonsand little league games. Asked to explain how he manages to balance thesethings, Remnick shrugs and says he doesn't do anything other than spend timewith his family and work. 'It's not like I build toy ships, or travel toTahiti. I don't go surfing. I don't know: what do people do?'”

Well sir, many of them struggle with work-family balance,even if they’re financially successful. Or so I assume, anyway. Because, sure, wealthy people can afford greatchildcare, but many also work long hours and travel for business, and even wealthyparents want to spend time with their children.

But the rich are hardly the only ones facing the problem. Ifjuggling work and children is tough for the 1 percent, imagine how it is for peoplewho have not “careers” but plain old jobs, people who can’t afford great childcare and for whom staying home with a sick kidmight mean not only forfeiting a day’s pay but possibly getting fired.

Remnick is aware of all this, of course. But maybe it doesn’tall click together; I suspect he doesn’t connect “family-career balance” to theshortcomings in our system—problems with family leave, daycare, jobflexibility, health care and so on—that can lead to genuine desperation,financial sacrifice and, in some families, economic disaster. His use of “career”rather than “work,” together with his light-handed tone, suggest he isimagining hyper-responsible parents checking off quality time with little Abigailand Aiden between conferences and fundraisers, just another aspect of the “liberalaesthetic raised to a style of life.” After all, it was under Remnick’seditorship that, in a 2004New Yorker review of books describing this dilemma, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote, “Choosingbetween work and home is, in the end, a problem only for those who have achoice. In this sense, it is, like so many ‘problems’ of twenty-first-centurylife, a problem of not having enough problems.”

Maybe I'm making too much of Remnick’s offhand phrase ina piece that’s mostly about something else.

But I can't help thinking that if even the brilliant editor of one of the country’s mostinfluential publications doesn’t fully understand why work-family balance is aserious issue for a lot of people at every socioeconomic level, then those ofus for whom it’s an honest-to-God requisite concern have an long way to go.

Why so much fitness and parenting advice is bullshit

2011-12-02T15:14:00.001-08:00

Et tu, Psychology Today? And you, Dr.Michael J. Breus? What’s your excuse, ThomasFriedman?

You never have to look far to find flagrant violations ofthe “Correlationdoes not imply causation” law. They abound in newspapers, magazines, TVprograms, parenting and diet books—anywhere, basically, that covers topics likeparenting or fitness, and thus relies heavily on behavioral research. In the past month, you could find examples of the problem, among other places, onthe website of the country’s leading popular psychology monthly, in a piece by thetriple-Pulitzer-winning New York Timescolumnist, and in a psychologist’s column on Huffington Post.

As many of you mayrecall from your old science and psychology courses (or from a Brain, Child piece I wrote last year),just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean that one of them caused the other. For example, if there’s acorrelation between A and B—more of A tends to go hand in hand with more of B—that’sno proof that A caused B. It mighthave. Or maybe B caused A, or some combination of the two, or a third factor, C, caused both.

In a Psychology Todayblog post titled “Parents:Your Words Matter,” University of Chicago psychology professor SianBeilock writes about a correlation between the way parents talkto their preschool children and the children’s later problem-solving skills. Researcher Susan Levine, Beilock reports, found that themore parents talked about spatial characteristics of objects—using words like “big,tall, circle, curvy, edge”—the better the child performs, years later, on spatial problems.

“What Dr. Levine and her colleagues found was thatchildren's spatial abilities are in, large part, driven by what their parentssay,” Beilock writes.

If that’s what Dr. Levine and her colleagues really found,there’s no evidence of it in Beilock’s post, nor in the abstractof Levine’s article in Developmental Science. Based on what they present, it could just as easily go theother way around.

Now, I’m not going to argue that parents words don’t matter (though in research I’veconducted in my own household, I found little correlation between parental instructionsto take one’s dirty dishes into the kitchen and the likelihood that one’s dirtydishes will actually be taken into the kitchen). It may seemlogical that a child who’s always hearing her parents talk about objects' sizes and shapesmight be more attuned to those qualities and, thus, better at solving problems involvingthose concepts.

That might make intuitive sense, but intuition isn’t proof—another lesson from those college psychologycourses. Besides, it’s just as intuitively logical that parents who are good atspatial problems are more likely to perceive the world in spatial terms and (unconsciously,perhaps) pepper their language with spatial words. And that their children tendto inherit those skills and later prove, unsurprisingly, to be good at spatial stuff,too.

One big moral of this story is that simple correlationsbetween parental actions and children’s behavior rarely proves cause and effectif the parents and children are biologically related. In most stuations, it’stoo difficult to rule out the possibility that genes, rather than parenting, are the cause.

Thomas Friedman forgets that, too. Hewrites about a study in which 15-year-olds whose parents read to them whenthey were little scored higher on a test than kids whose parents didn’t. From this, Friedmanconcludes:

We need betterparents. Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make ahuge difference in a student’s achievement.

Spot the correlation/causation error here? Again, it's a problem of ignoring possible genetic influence. What kind of parents read books to their kids?Probably those who like to read themselves. What kind of people like to read? Usuallypeople who are good at reading. What kind of parents involve themselves in theirchild’s education? Most likely parents who did well in school themselves.

So it’s no big leap to imagine that children who are read to also inherited their parents' reading skills and academic achievement. Yet neither Friedman nor the researchers seem to have considered that possibility. But hey, even if their conclusion were 100 percent scientifically sound, they still would hardly justify this comment, quoted by Friedman,from the guy who oversees the testing:

[J]ust asking yourchild how was their school day and showing genuine interest in the learningthat they are doing can have the same impact as hours of private tutoring.

First, judging from the monosyllabic grunts I usually get in answer to that question, it seems doubtful. Anyway, how would he know this? I’m going to step out on a limb and guess that thereprobably aren't many parents alive who purchase “hours of private tutoring”for their children yet don't bother to ask how school is going. So who would be the control group here?

Finally, in his rhymingly titled HuffingtonPost piece, “Sleeping Late, Eating Late, Leads to Gaining Weight,” MichaelJ. Breus similarly jumps to a conclusion, based on a correlation between sleeppatterns and weight gain.

A message to nightowls: There's news that your bedtime -- and those late-night snacks --may be preventing you from dropping those stubborn extra pounds.

Again, it’s not hard to think of another explanation for this correlation: That peoplewho like to stay up late are often also people who like to eat a lot. As acard-carrying member of both groups, I can vouch for this. But Breus, a.k.a. “TheSleep Doctor,” doesn’t even consider that possibility. Wonderif this could have anything to do with the topic of his recent book, The Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan: Lose Weightthrough Better Sleep.

Even if those writers and researchers are leaping toconclusions, you might ask, where’s the harm? Why wouldn't you want to ask about your kid'sschool day, whether it got him better test scores or not? (Do youask about your partner's work day, even if you don't think it will get him or her a raise?) Besides, if there’s any chance, however slight, that itwould improve their school performance, why not go for it? Asking the question is pretty easy.

The spatial language situation is a bit more difficult. You mightbe willing to stop and think about every word you say to your child and deliberately insert spatial terms into the mix. (Although what if by doing that you’resquelching some other form of communication that might be equally important? Iused to play word games with my then-preschool kids. On the day when I asked one to name the opposite of “short” and he came back with both “long” and “tall,” I knew he wouldbe good in language classes, and voila, he is. Yet I can't say hislanguage skills are the result of playing word games; very likely, he and I both likedplaying word games because we’re both good at language.)

But the most damaging result of all of thismisinterpretation and misinformation is guilt. It's the guilt you might feel if you take Friedman seriously when he proclaims, “We need betterparents.”

Don’t most of us—at least, those of us who comprise the audience forthese articles, i.e., people interested in figuring out how to be better parents—alreadydo plenty of fretting about what we’re doing wrong? Must we really be told, once again,that we’re never good enough?

A woman's shadow work is never done

2011-11-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

Speaking of paid and unpaid work, the New York Times just ran a fascinating op-ed piece by Craig Lambert,deputy editor of Harvard Magazine, about “shadow work.” That’s a term Lambertsays was coined 30 years ago by Australian philosopher Ivan Illich to describeall of the work people do that they don’t get paid for, such as housework, shopping,paying bills, etc.

Lambert argues that machines, instead of liberating us fromrepetitive and menial tasks, have actually increased the amount of shadow work wedo. We pump our own gas, squeegee our own windows, bag our own groceries, planand book our own travel arrangements. Chores that we now perform for ourselves,often with the help of technology, were once done by human beings who got paidfor it. At our jobs, support staff likesecretaries and clerks have been reduced, their tasks—typing, copying, mailing,sorting email—added to remaining employees’ other responsibilities. “Even thosein senior management perform these humdrum jobs,” Lambert writes.

Doctors say patients complain of fatigue, Lambert notes. “Muchof this fatigue may result from the steady, surreptitious accumulation ofshadow work in modern life,” he writes. “People are simply doing a huge numberof tasks that were once done for them by others.”

I’ll leave it to economists to figure out whether Lambert isright, whether technology has produced a net increase or decrease in shadowwork. Obviously, technology has streamlined many unpaid tasks: washing dishes,looking up information, shopping for certain items.

What most interests me is the timely point tucked within Lambert’spiece. More people are questioning, thanks in part to the Occupy Wall Streetmovement, why so many Americans are struggling while a tiny minority rakes in phenomenalwealth.

Lambert’s thesis provides one explanation for thatphenomenon. But he steers around that point, blaming not CEOs but the machinesthemselves. “The robots have won,” he announces. “The robots are in charge now,pushing a thousand routine tasks onto each of our backs.”

But of course, robots aren’t the ones forcing humans to do extrawork. Robots, who will gladly work for free, don’t benefit from thearrangement. Robots aren’t lighting cigars with $100 bills. That would be, atleast theoretically, the people who profit from the robots’ work. Of course,not all business owners are thriving financially, not even those who have replacedemployees with machines. But whatever financial savings are being seen—in salaries,health insurance and so on—isn’t going to the machines, let alone the people takingon extra shadow work.

Meanwhile, there’s one important category of shadow workthat Lambert doesn’t mention at all—understandably, since it’s not central tohis point—but that is relevant to this blog: caregiving. Technology, as far asI can tell, neither dramatically reduces nor increases the work of caring for children,the old and the sick. But some research indicates that parents, especially mothers,are spending more time than ever on childcare.

As the New York Times reported last year:

Before 1995, mothersspent an average of about 12 hours a week attending to the needs of theirchildren. By 2007, that number had risen to 21.2 hours a week forcollege-educated women and 15.9 hours for those with less education.

Although mothers stilldo most of the parenting, fathers also registered striking gains: to 9.6 hoursa week for college-educated men, more than double the pre-1995 rate of 4.5hours; and to 6.8 hours for other men, up from 3.7, according to an additionalanalysis by Betsey Stevenson and Dan Sacks, economists at the Wharton School ofthe University of Pennsylvania.

It stands to reason that, as our population ages, we’ll bespending more time caring for our elders, too.

Unpaid caregiving represents a big chunk of shadow work, andit still falls disproportionately on women. If Lambert is right, it helpsexplain why we’re feeling so overwhelmed. We’re juggling paid work, plus moreof the traditional shadow work than we performed in the past, plus new high-techforms of shadow work.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some shadow work to do inthe kitchen.

Why I don't "like" the idea that mothers do the work of twenty, for free

2011-10-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

I saw this image posted the other day on the Facebook pageof asocial networking site for mothers. When I last checked a moment ago, thepicture had been shared 2,920 times (including by a friend of mine, whose statusupdate is where I first saw it) and “liked” 3,742 times on this mothers’ site pagealone.

I didn’t share the post. I did not “like” it. I didn’t even like it.

Which made me more or less alone among the 700-some people wholeft comments. I haven’t read every last one, but in a quick skim I didn't see any other commenter who wasn’t delighted with the sentiment expressedin the post. Typical comments—short and hastily typed, as if clicked outbetween laundry loads, or while waiting that cry from the nursery signaling naptime had ended—said things like “True!” and “Sharing,” and “Ain’t this the truth,” and “AMEN,” and “Soundsabout right” and “Us mums are incredible :)” and “LOVE LOVE LOVE this.”

Not to be a buzz kill. But this approving reaction goes a long waytoward explaining why mothers’ labor gets exploited, why mothers, far frombeing financially compensated for their parenting work, are in fact financiallypenalized for performing it, to their eventual economic peril.

Oh, that's OK, the comments suggest. We don’t mind! Our children are so important to us. We’re happy to doit! We LOVE LOVE LOVE doing it!

Lots of people love their work. Yet many of them are nevertheless rewarded for it monetarily, sometimes handsomely. (At least writers, who also often wind up working for free because the market exploits their love of the work, complain about it.) Posts like this—simply the new-technology delivery of an age-old sentiment—are one way society reinforces the idea that good mothers don't mind sacrificing. That good mothers are proud of sacrificing.

The post isn’t quite accurate; even the most hardworking mothers don’t dothe work of more than two or three people, tops. And not even that on average, according to acover story in Time magazine in August, which reported that new research shows motherswork about the same amount as fathers—as long as you count both paid and non-paid work, since mothers unsurprisingly do proportionately more of the latter than fathers do.

“ What these new findings mean is that the widespread beliefthat working mothers have it the worst—a belief that engenders an enormousamount of conflict between spouses—is simply not the open-and-shut case itonce was,” wrote Ruth Davis Konigsberg. “… And it's time that women — myselfincluded — admit it and move on.”

Again, I must differ. Unless by “move on” Konigsberg means “turnour attention from who works more hoursto focus on what is really the far bigger issue—i.e., the fact that many more of those oh-so-equal hours that fathersput in are rewarded with paychecks. Not to mention retirement accounts, professionaladvancement, earning power, social status, health and dental, the respect of future employers and the occasional company car.”

Whereas mothers, as even the disliked post above correctlynotes, “work for free” much of the time.

Konigsberg doesn’t dwell on the pay thing. On the contrary, shebarely mentions it, writing as if the issue of monetary compensation were a triviality, as if paidand unpaid work were, for all practical purposes, the same thing; work is work.

I, on the otherhand, consider a paycheck a salient difference, if for no other reason because even when it's shared between partners, the partner whose name is on the checks is building a much stronger foundation of future employability.

Frustrating as it is to see that overlooked in a Time cover story, it's better than the other, far more widespreadattitude: that paid and unpaid work are completelydifferent. So different, in fact, that unpaid work actually isn’t work at all.

Mothers’ caregiving work doesn’t count for thepurpose of acquiring health insurance or 401(k) contributions or SocialSecurity credit. Mothers’ work doesn’t count even if their labor—washingdiapers, meeting with teachers, driving to dental appointments, coaching withhomework, preparing meals—frees the other parent to devote moretime to work that does earn apaycheck and therefore does count. (Toavoid being labeled sexist, let me note thatthe genders are occasionally reversed.)

Sure, by now anybody with a speck of cultural sensitivityis careful to use the PC terminology, to delicately distinguish betweenwork “outside the home” and “in the home.” But that's one of the rare times when mothers’ caregivingwork is treated like, well, work.

Mothers who “opt out” to care for their childrenare considered to have stopped working. Ifthey later try to find a paid job, they worry about how to explain “the gap in theirresume” as if having to rationalize a time when they weren’t working. I have talked to women who've been told they would be better off padding that gap with a minimum-wage, part-time, unskilled job than admitting to potential employers that they were at-home mothers.

This attitude helps explain why, even when they're getting paid and working in comparable jobs, mothersmake less money than non-mothers (including fathers and childless people of either sex). It helps explain why more womenthan men are poor. It helps explain why so little status is attached to mothering,why at-home mothers often mention experiencing the “cocktail party demotion” inwhich they see people’s eyes, when they mention their occupation, dart around theroom in search of better conversation, as if a (working) accountant or engineer is automatically better at exchanging sparklingrepartee over the martinis.

It helps explain why, when I divorced and thereby lost myhealth insurance, I wasn’t eligible for the federal government program that,because of the bad economy, subsidized about two thirds of COBRA premiums for laid-offworkers. Even though it was just as tough for me to find a job or afford COBRA (about$500 a month, in my case).

I may not have been doing the work of twenty people. But in the federal government's eyes, I wasn't even doing the work of one.

So am I suggesting that someone should start paying mothers a salary for taking care of their own children? Well, that's hard to envision, certainly in the current political climate. But folks, let's start considering it real work that deserves the respect and some of the economic protections and social benefits we give to other kinds of work. Either that, or let's insist that mothers and fathers share the work of parenting more equitably—that both, let's say, do the work of ten people.

Until then, damned if I'm going to “like” a post comparing me to a masochist and a saint. I have no interest in earning either label.

Here’s what I wrote in the comments:

True or not,celebrating this sort of slogan reinforces the idea that it's OK. Mothersshould not be expected to do the work of 20 people for free. The work ofraising children should be shared among fathers and the rest of the village,and mothers should not have to sacrifice their financial security to see thatit gets done.

Four people clicked “like” on my comment.

Then the posted comments returned to “True!” and “Awesome!” and“Yup, spot on."

What we talk about when we talk about parenthood

2011-10-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Odes has written an excellent post on Babble's "Strollerderby" blog about discussing parental ambivalence with non-parents. And I say that not because she agrees with me.

Well OK, that is a big part of the reason. But also because Odes explains the phenomenon really well, and makes several additional good points.

Such as:

Yes, parenthood is hard sometimes. But really, so are a lot of things that bring rewards. You don’t have to tell a parent about the rewarding part; a parent is living it. But the feelings of joy and fulfillment that come from raising a child are hard to describe or to express. Partially, perhaps, because people feel bad about expressing them, because everyone knows that non-parents don’t want to hear you get all googly eyed over your kid. People complain when parents complain, but they complain about parents kvelling, too.

It seems like non-parents mostly want parents to just shut up already.

Excellent observation. The XX Factor post I mentioned a few posts ago that criticized mothers' complaints was also put off by their "bizarre baby proselytizing." My impression is that people who don't want to hear you gripe about parenting really really don't want to hear you go on about what a joyful experience it is.

And you know what? I get this. Before I became a parent, I didn't particularly want to go into a lot of conversational detail about either one, either. Any more than I want to hear, say, a runner friend go on and on about his or her pacing and hydration and electrolytes and whatever. At least not more than maybe once.

Which is why, when I talk to my non-parent friends, I tend to discuss other subjects. Which is fine! Because believe it or not, I'm interested in many other subjects, including but not limited to the weather, work, food, books, movies, travel, current events, the economy, politics, fashion, politics, religion, writing, shopping, funny things we saw on the internet.

(And I would rather discuss just about any other subject, really, than what my children are up to lately with a non-parent friend who asks in a sort of polite, perfunctory, obligatory way, as if secretly thinking, "I know her life revolves entirely around them and she probably has no interest in talking about anything else, so here goes ..." Which, by the way, in my observation seems to happen less to fathers than mothers.)

When parents are talking to each other, though, their kids are sort of an natural area of conversational commonality. And if there's a non-parent or two in the room at the time, I don't think parents are required to show only the good parts in order to soothe or cajole or trick them into making the same choice. Or as Odes puts it:

Acknowledging the difficulties should me a way for parents to find support, both personally and culturally. But even if it’s not, I don’t think parents should have to be their own marketing department. As far as I’m concerned, my evolutionary imperative does not extend to the species at large.

Right? Most people don't, or at least shouldn't, care whether someone else chooses to have kids or not. (Except maybe because we want lots of workers paying taxes at the point when we're collecting Social Security.) Anybody else, as far as I'm concerned, is free to do whatever they want.

And somehow it usually all works out. My non-parent friends, like my parent friends, seem quite happy with the paths they've taken.

Great reading in the new Brain, Child

2011-09-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is my article/essay (essicle? artay?) in the new issue of Brain, Child magazine about mothers who complain, and the people who complain about mothers who complain.

Also, check out Brain, Child's table of contents for a couple of really excellent essays. Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser writes about open adoption and her complicated relationship with her daughter's birthmother. Tracy Lynch explores what we mean when we call something "inappropriate," and wonders whether we could all stand to stretch our boundaries a bit.

And of course, check out the whole paper issue of Brain, Child itself to read lots of honest and intelligent writing about motherhood. It's a magazine in which, if you complain about motherhood, people won't roll their eyes. And if you talk about how wonderful motherhood is, they won't give you that pat frozen smile and try to be subtle as they gaze around the cocktail party in search of more interesting conversation.

Trying to explain the paradox of parental happiness

2011-09-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Irin Carmon of Jezebel haswritten anaccount of the same screening of the new movie I Don't Know How She DoesIt—and its Q&A sessionafterward with star Sarah Jessica Parker and novelist Allison Pearson—that was reportedin a Slate post that Iwrote about a couple of days ago. Like Slate'sJessica Grose, Carmon compares the event to a group-therapy session, thoughthankfully she avoids sneering at the other women in attendance.

Also like Grose, Carmon worries thatmovies like IDKHSDI—and comments by mothers at the screening—make motherhoodseem, well, awful (frankly, the movie itself sounds pretty awful, but that's a matter for another post). Carmon writes, as Grose also implied, that hearing about all these problems is a turnofffor young women like themselves, who don’t have kids yet.

Childless young women don't necessarilywelcome a bunch of negativity, I’ve come to realize in writing aboutthis issue here on the blog and in an upcoming piece for Brain, Child (link to come, once itruns). They’d rather anticipate motherhood as joyful. Make it sound like abummer, Caron and Grose suggest, and they’ll want to skip the whole thing.

"So I'm curious how do you balancebeing really honest about the fact that it's really challenging, with scaringyounger women?" Carmon asked the celebrities, during her turn at themic.

Parker, Pearson and some woman in theaudience tried to explain that, however much it sometimes sucks, parentingoverall is nonetheless wonderful.

Parker and Pearson discuss "I Don't Know How She Does It."

Honestly, it’s no wonder Carmon andGrose were dismayed.

The hassle/happiness balance of parenting is unquestionably a paradox, onethat’s tough to discuss even with another parent who totally gets it, let alone someonewho hasn’t experienced it. Just last night, in a conversation in Real Life®, a friendand I were exchanging motherly rants about how our children drive us nuts. We notedthat our childless friends lead more serene existences—they get to choose what todo after work, don't have to clean up after anybody but themselves, never arenagged to buy stuff they can't afford, never (or at least rarely) have to helplessly endure the wrath of planeloads of strangers. Yet we also agreed that, despiteeverything, we’re still glad we have kids. Not only because we love ourspecific kids, but also because it’s an experience we wouldn’t want to havemissed.

But why? Here we grasped for the rightwords. Because it’s, um, a challenge? Because kids make life unpredictable andvariable? Because what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Yes, sure, all ofthose things.

Except that those don't sound all thatfun, either.

What parents feel, I think, is notreducible to simple concepts like “happy” or “fun.” Those words are vague enoughthemselves, let alone when you try to stretch them to cover an experience that,let’s face it, involves its share of heartbreak, worry and swearing. Hence the bewilderment,not only of Carmon and Grose, but of journalists tryingto explainall those studies finding that parents are less happy than non-parents.

Maybe satisfaction in parenting is a primitiveanimal reflex, hardwired in our brains by evolution, enhanced with washes of hormones. Maybe it's some other mysterious emotion entirely, one that exists independently of those modern comforts we usually associate with enjoyable lifestyles—concepts like “plenty of free time” or “adequate sleep." Or maybe, speculates theAtlantic’s Megan McArdle, “weare simply sentimentalizing the whole ordeal to keep ourselves from rooting outour unused passports from the sock drawer and dashing off to Europe, never tobe heard from again.”

In any case, try to describe any of thisto people who haven’t experienced it and you may sound inane. You may even find your efforts described onsomeone’s blog as “bizarre baby proselytizing.”

One more thing puzzles me about thisepisode. Why should anyone care whether Carmon and Grose want kids—or whetherthey’re driven instead, as Grose suggests, to “consider sterilization”? That is, asidefrom whatever larger, demographic concerns we might have about building a sufficient workforce to subsidize our future Social Security andhealth-care requirements.

Personally, I’m not desperate enough tosugarcoat things with an eye toward securing my monthly checks. Andthere’s no point in snaring women into parenthood with false promises of paradise,like 19^th century land speculators luring unwitting Easterners west to what turned out to be harshprairie homesteads.

I say we lay out the realities for not-yet mothers ashonestly as possible, then leave it up to them. Having children is anact of faith, its consequences unpredictable. If they have kids, most likely, they’llbe glad they did it, despite the challenges. If they don't, most likely, they'll be content also.

If young women like Carmon and Grose think the risk of dissatisfaction is too great, as far as I'm concerned they shouldfeel free to skip the whole thing.

Why even mothers with beachy hair might have a point

2011-09-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

I have pulled myself out of blogging hiatus and its accompanying guilt spiral to discuss this post on Slate's "XX Factor" blog,in which Jessica Grose reports on a special screening of the new working-mothercomedy I Don't Know How She Does It. The event included a post-viewing Q&A with star SarahJessica Parker and Allison Pearson, author of the best-selling novel onwhich the film is based. Grose writes that she was so unnerved by the mothersin the audience—their post-viewing questions turned the event into somethingresembling a 1970s-style "group therapy session/modern consciousness raisingcircle"—that she fled before she was forced to "consider sterilization"(Grose has no kids, but apparently intends to someday).

Sarah Jessica Parker and Allison Pearson speak at the screening.

For what it's worth, I haven't seen the movie (and didn't finish the book). Judging from the trailer, it doesn't look very good, and I suspect my own reaction will resemble Mary Elizabeth Williams' review on Salon. But that's probably beside the point here.

I have an essayish article coming up in the fall issue of Brain, Child (I'll link to the actual piece once itgoes online) about the phenomenon of feminist, progressive writers—people you’d normally expect to support women's choices and viewpoints—turning criticaland contemptuous when the women in question happen to be mothers expressingsome discontent with their lives. Surprisingly often, writers trivialize mothers' complaints, castingthem as excessive or overwrought or whiny or merely First World problems ofprivileged women.

My essay offers a handful of illustrations (including,sad to say, a couple from "XX Factor"). Grose's blog post, having just appearedyesterday, long after my deadline, isn't one of them. But it could be.

Let me interject that I respect Grose asa writer. And that we've all been in groups whose aesthetics, opinions and soforth didn't match our own. And that it's possible there's something she'strying to convey in the post—some truly eye-roll-inducing aspect of theevent she attended—that I'm just not grasping.

But. Come on.

... (T)he crowd did not look much like journalists: It wasalmost exclusively women (I counted two men), and almost all of them had theperfectly set "beachy" waves that are meant to look tousled butclearly took at least an hour with a curling iron and various products tocreate. When the heavily made-up moderators (one in fetching leather pants) goton stage to announce the movie, I realized that this was an event for mombloggers ...

Could we feminists agree to avoid pointing to the scarcity of menat an event to implicitly undermine the event's seriousness (when the real reason might have to do with the nature of the event itself, or possibly even with men's obliviousness to a legitimate issue)? Could we, further, declare a moratorium on discrediting what women say based on theirhairstyles, makeup and clothing? Is it really all that odd for womento spend some time on their appearance before sitting on a stage next to celebrities, including one who is famous for her stylishness? Pleasebear in mind that I am a person who has never owned leather pants and whosehair would only be described as "beachy" not in the “curling iron andproducts” sense but in the "she obviously spent all day at thekids' swimming lessons and hasn't been near a comb since" sense.

Grose's description of the session is laced with implicit contempt.The woman introducing SJP "squealed with delight." The moderators'questions were "somewhat coherent." Audience members engaged in"bizarre baby proselytizing" and spoke of their lives in a"groovy '70s emotional mode." The actress and writer "did theirbest to relate to the women, to soothe them" (not, Grose suggests, becausethe stars genuinely empathized or agreed, but because SJP has good peopleskills).

As she listened, Grose found herself "saddened"because the attendees "were clearly in need of some outlet for their discontent." And because the poor things were deluded enough to think they'd find "a satisfyinganswer" from ... well, an actress whostarred in a movie on the subject and frequently publicly discusses her own family life, and an author who wrote a whole book about it andhas undoubtedly talked to thousands of mothers since then.

As for the attendees’ actual statements, I have read throughGrose's post numerous times and still can't for the life of me figure out whatshe found so ridiculous or out of place about them. A stay-at-home mother of five said sheoften feels trapped and envious of working friends (and vice versa). Anotherwoman feels guilty about leaving her son with his grandmother rather than takinghim to play dates. Another is annoyed at friends who wanted to bring theirchildren along on a group trip.

These are individual predicaments, but they touch on some ofthe very real problems that many mothers experience: isolation, envy, guilt,the often-thwarted need for respite.

Instead of making fun of these squealing women intheir overdetermined hair and makeup, I think it makes sense to consider the extentto which their feelings might be shared by many other contemporary mothers, including those with suitably unstyled hair and pants made of cloth, and towonder whether these potentially widespread problems just might be of interest from a feminist perspective.

Take the at-home mother who feels trapped. One wonders whether 21st century mothers are particularly subject to this sort of isolation, restlessness and envy,as well as to cultural pressures that would lead an intellectually active woman to choose stayinghome over a career in the first place. Mightthere be structural and institutional causes for—and possible solutions to—this dilemma?

Grose's post links the term she herself chose—“consciousnessraising"—to a Wikipedia entry defining that dated-sounding phrase. Itdescribes groups, common in the '70s, in which ordinary women discussed problemsin their own lives and learned the ways in which these represented moreuniversal issues. They're one of the ways feminist ideas initially spread from writers and intellectuals to women across the country. From Wikipedia:

Early feminists argued that women were isolated from eachother, and as a result many problems in women's lives were misunderstood as"personal," or as the results of conflicts between the personalitiesof individual men and women, rather than systematic forms of oppression.Raising consciousness meant helping oneself and helping others to becomepolitically conscious. Consciousness raising groups aimed to get a betterunderstanding of women's oppression by bringing women together to discuss andanalyze their lives, without interference from the presence of men.

The term is a good fit here. Grose describes an event in which women discussed and analyzed their lives, by chance without the presence of(more than two) men. But she missed its real significance in this situation. Instead, she categorized hersubjects’ problems as personal rather than political, the "sad" needs of overdressed "mom bloggers" rather than potential evidence of systemic forms of ... well, some might consider "oppression" too strong a word, but you get thepoint.

It's too bad Grose didn't take her own analogy more seriously.

Welcome, New York Times Motherlode blog readers!

2011-06-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Visits to this blog have spiked over the past day or so, no doubt thanks to the discussion on Motherlode, the parenting blog in the New York Times. A couple of weeks ago, writer Lisa Belkin launched an online book club, and chose as the inaugural book "TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood," a collection of essays by mothers writing about working, caring for children, and a bunch of other subjects. One of them is an essay by me.

(By the way, it's obviously been, ahem, a while since I last posted here. I'd have probably managed to return from the lapse a bit more subtly had I not chosen to headline my previous post with a reference to, um, Mother's Day. Turns out that working at a new job, single parenting two teenagers, maintaining a house, doing a bunch of freelance projects and taking care of spring planting and lawn maintenance is more time consuming than you might think. I'm going to try to do better.)

Anyway, thanks for stopping by! The Motherlode discussion has generated some interesting comments, roughly half of them negative (approximately the same proportion I saw on Salon in response to my essay). The negative ones in particular share some common themes, and in the next few days, I'd like to consider at least a couple of those topics them in more depth. Meanwhile, I'd love to hear your opinions.

First up, the issue of "whining." Why are women so often charged with whining when they discuss the challenges and/or internal conflicts they face trying to balance career and motherhood? Is voicing any sort of complaint intrinsically whiny, or is it a matter of tone? Are there any situations when men are commonly accused of whining or, if not, why not? Why is the accusation of whining so often paired with a description of the supposed whiner as "privileged"? What exactly constitutes privilege, and is there some socioeconomic level at which negative thoughts about motherhood and career can be expressed without seeming to whine?

Let me have your thoughts, whiny or otherwise!

Celebrating Mother's Day with tired mother stereotypes

2011-05-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

Why would a popular website that promises in its mission statement "to tell the truth about parenting, to bypass the clichés and dig into the magical and maddening reality," do an 10-part slideshow that perpetuates motherhood clichés, flattening the magical and maddening reality of real-life individuals into unrecognizable cutouts? Not to mention pitting readers, in typical mommy-wars fashion, against these hypothetical figures in some imaginary game of competitive mothering? (The headline touts "11 stereotypes," but only 10 are listed; perhaps "you" are the 11th?)

http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2011/04/21/the-other-mothers-11-types-youll-encounter-in-the-zoo-of-parenting/

Yeah, I know the piece calls itself tongue-in-cheek and is intended to amuse. And sure, I realize they were just trying to do something different for Mother's Day. And yes, I admit to being able to loosely attach some of these labels to women I've met in real life. But they were all people I didn't know well, because when you get to know individuals they're harder to reduce to simplistic, one-dimensional characters.

What's worse are the constant cracks telling "you" (i.e., the reader) how "you" supposedly feel in comparison to these people. The answer: You suck. Sanctimommy will "let you know" that she's a better parent than you, and "if you're feeling thin-skinned," you'll agree. Power Mom's activities are "much more important than the likes of you," and Perfect Mom threatens to "make you make you feel like a mess."

When it comes to your appearance, you can't win. Run into Glamor Mom and you'll wind up feeling "upstaged," while Schlumpy Mom's relaxed attire could be perceived as "a knock on your new 'do." Only Slacker Mom is portrayed as someone you'd enjoy spending time with.

The underlying assumption is that anything another mother (or, honestly, another woman) chooses to do is an unequivocal rebuke to whatever different choices you've made for yourself. If you run into someone wearing a blue sweater, the thinking seems to go, you'll feel bad if you're wearing a green one.

Sigh. Call me a Humorless Feminist Mommy (™), but I'm not really amused by the image of mothers constantly putting each other down and making each other feel bad because we make different choices. That happens now and then in real life, but not nearly as often as you see it in the media, where it has become a tired trope.

Not only does this slideshow fail to dig into magical and maddening reality, it's peddling one of the most shopworn clichés around.

Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

In honor of my mother, who would be 80 tomorrow, I uploaded an album of photos of her, pictures my brother and I used to create a collage for her memorial service in 2008. I love that they're out of sequence; you get to jump around in a life and momentarily forget its ... well, its finity. In the shadow of Alzheimer's, the collage and attendees' reminiscences helped restore my memories of my mother as witty, artistic, imaginative, creative and above all fun.

Among the many, many lessons in this album: If your father is the editor of a newspaper, you'll wind up with some cool childhood photos.

My mom loved sunbathing. This swimming suit is cute, but clearly it would leave weird tan lines.

This photo always makes me think of Dorothy Gale in "The Wizard of Oz."

Mom is in the middle row, far left. Her friend Janet is sitting in front of her.

Not sure if this is in college or a job. She worked in the ad department for Better Homes & Gardens, where she met my dad.

In front of the brick wall in the living room.

1940s glamor.

1980s glasses.

Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota.

Three generations: Mom, my brother, my niece.

Mom winning a high-school art contest. She had art talent, but aparently decided she was a better writer. Same here.

At the nursing home.

Note the similarities between the two photos above, more than half a century apart.

In her days of working as an ad copywriter for Dayton's.

What a smile.

My late uncle John far left, was 15 when he played the piano at my parents' wedding.

Mom and the now-16-year-old.

With my grandma. So '30s.

This one of my mom and grandpa might be my favorite of all these photos. Note rakish angle, doffed fedora, matching smiles.

Mom's outfit would be perfectly fashionable today.

Obviously, this one was taken after my tonsillectomy. The painting above the couch is by my mom.

But wait -- have I even mentioned "TORN" yet?

2011-05-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

I don't think I have. Tell you what, I've been so busy with my new job (which a couple of weeks ago went from an easygoing part-time gig to -- temporarily -- a more-challenging-what-with-everything-else-full-time gig), with a bunch of freelance work, with my sons' ridiculously intense after-school sports schedules, with going to a favorite uncle's funeral in Athens, GA, two weeks ago, with being out of town all last week (Eureka Springs, AR, with a group of old friends -- really fun until two of us were thrown by horses; I sustained only bruising but, sadly, my friend Beth broke her pelvis), coming home to a dining-room table blanketed a foot thick with newspapers, magazines and mail ... so busy, anyway, that I've done a crappy job of keeping up this blog AND of doing my part to spread the word about

TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood

It's a wonderful collection of essays about, well, just what the title says, a.k.a. the challenges of work-family balance, a.k.a. the impossibility of having it all. My essay, "Regrets of a Stay-at-Home Mother" was a last-minute addition after it was published in Salon, and I'm very proud to be a part of it.

The book was well-reviewed today in the Los Angeles Times, which mentioned my piece in a nice way. (I didn't exactly "leave journalism" -- just quit my full-time job -- but since you called me "refreshingly candid" I'll forgive you, LAT!).

Reading my essay in a bookstore

2011-05-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

If you're in the Northfield, MN, area on Wednesay night at 7:30, you can hear me and fellow contributor Shannon Hyland-Tassava reading the essays we contributed to the newly published "TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood."

As you can see, the bookstore is called "Monkey See, Monkey Read," which may cause some confusion ("No no, MY name is KATY Read"). But it should be fun!

http://www.monkeyread.com/

Male researcher: Women who post Facebook pictures could be appearance-obsessed, attention-starved, competitive sluts

2011-04-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

You know that scene at the beginning of “The Social Network,” where the fictionalized Mark Zuckerberg gets in a fight with his fictionalized girlfriend in a bar, then storms home and gets revenge by inventing a “hot or not”-type site that includes his (now ex-) girlfriend’s picture?

Reading about this study made me wonder if its lead researcher had been in a fight in a bar with an ex-girlfriend who likes to post Facebook photos of herself.

Women who post numerous pictures of themselves and have lots of friends on Facebook aren't just sociable, or proud of their photos—they’re actually kind of messed up, according to the study, which was conducted at State University of New York at Buffalo, reported in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, described here in a university press release and publicized in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. In fact, the researchers seem to have concluded, it’s not just prolific picture posters but all women whose Facebook habits reveal identity and security issues.

[R]esearcher Michael A. Stefanone, PhD, and colleagues found that females who base their self worth on their appearance tend to share more photos online and maintain larger networks on online social networking sites.
He says the results suggest that females identify more strongly with their image and appearance, and use Facebook as a platform to compete for attention.
… Among other things, the team looked at the amount of time subjects spent managing profiles, the number of photos they shared, the size of their online networks and how promiscuous they were in terms of "friending" behavior.

Dr. Michael A. Stefanone finds women's Facebook habits "disappointing."

Thwarted romantic obsession might plausibly explain why, although half his subjects were men, Dr. Stefanone, an assistant professor of communications, hardly even mentions men except by implied favorable comparison to “females.” It might also explain the choice of the word “promiscuous,” which of course is Latin for “slutty,” to describe someone with lots of FB friends (though, to be fair—since the whole study isn’t available online without a subscription—there’s no way to know whether that word originated with Stefanone or the author of the press release). And surely post-rejection bitterness might shed light on why a researcher, examining what most people consider an innocuous, everyday activity—posting pictures of oneself on a site that, um, offers a popular tool with which users post pictures of themselves—interprets it so skeptically, at least when engaged in by women, as both a symptom of misplaced values and self-esteem and a calculating ploy to “compete for attention.”

Actually, up to a point I’m willing to go along with Stefanone’s ideas. I’m as interested in subtle sociological patterns as the next lifestyle journalist who took a few sociology classes in college, and I think studying the way people behave on Facebook—an novel communication medium now entrenched in the daily lives of millions—is worthwhile. I’m sure the lab coats could draw all kinds of fascinating conclusions about our innermost thoughts based on people’s Facebook habits, their status updates, their tendency to clutter up your newsfeed with their Farmville activity.

But … come on.

Not that my own FB experiences are empirical evidence of anything, but most of my friends who post lots of pictures of themselves strike me as people who like taking pictures and who do things like travel or get together with friends, activities they believe (rightly or wrongly) are of interest to others. Some of these Facebook photo posters are—get this—men. (“So if a man posts a lot of pictures on Facebook, does it mean he’s a woman?” asked one online commenter.)

No argument here with at least one of Stefanone’s findings, that women in our culture are concerned about their appearance. But that hardly requires extensive personality testing of Facebook users. It could be more easily demonstrated by, say, flipping through pretty much any random magazine this side of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking (and maybe that as well; again, I don’t have a subscription, so I have no way of knowing if it typically features weight-loss and makeup articles and photos of celebrities in bikinis).

Still, even if Stefanone and I agree on the phenomenon’s existence, I recoil at his description of it:

“Although it's stereotypical and might have been predicted," he says, "it is disappointing to me that in the year 2011 so many young women continue to assert their self worth via their physical appearance -- in this case, by posting photos of themselves on Facebook as a form of advertisement. Perhaps this reflects the distorted value pegged to women's looks throughout the popular culture and in reality programming from 'The Bachelor' to 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians.'”

Perhaps?? I would think it obvious to anyone from the Kardashians to Naomi Wolf that cultural influences play a role here. Otherwise, why would it matter that the year is 2011? Implied in Stefanone’s quote is the assumption that, due to recent cultural changes, women should be over all this appearance-related “advertisement” bullshit by now. (Speaking of advertisements and women’s appearance, here is a great story and slideshow illustrating one important way cultural influence on women's appearance-consciousness has been and still is leveraged and how, as is so often the case, it’s tied to corporate profits.)

If cultural influences didn’t play a role, if instead every woman in Stefanone’s study were spontaneously and independently driven to act in this "disappointing" (at least, to Stefanone) way without having received any external cues … then we are left with either the also quite viable possibility that young human females are biologically driven to employ visual signals in their mating behavior (in which case it wouldn't much matter if it were 2011 or 500,000 B.C.) or we’re all living in an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

By the way, I became curious about what Michael A. Stefanone has posted on his own Facebook page, so I—promiscuous Facebook slut that I am—sent him a friend request. He accepted it right away, no questions asked. That is, whereas I was somewhat familiar with the person to whom I was extending an offer of friendship, he readily friended a total stranger. Wonder what conclusions about male behavior we can draw from that.

For the record, Stefanone has 8% fewer friends than me. He also has fewer photos.

However, of the 38 photos I’ve posted, I’m in seven. Stefanone has only 16 photos, but he’s in 13 of them.

Good news on the job front

2011-04-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

I know it’s lame to start a post with an apology and/or excuse for going so long without posting, but here goes: Sorry I’ve gone so long without posting. I’ve been busy.

The good news is that I’ve been busy … with work!

Those of you who saw my essay “Regrets of a stay-at-home mom” on Salon or one of the other places it appeared or was discussed will know what a welcome turn of events this is. As I wrote in that essay, which is about the financial risks parents take when they give up work to care for children, I mentioned that since 2008, when I got divorced and moved back to Mineapolis, I had sent out countless resumes resulting in but a tiny handful of interviews, that I’d been passed over for jobs I wouldn’t have considered in my 20s, that I’d tried but failed to land jobs that would have paid $20,000 lower my last full-time salary, 15 years ago.

How things can change in a few months—a few months in which, not coincidentally, a Salon essay about your miserable job prospects and pathetic finances goes slightly viral, gets passed around by friends, so it gets noticed by editors at your local paper as well as reprinted on its Sunday op-ed section, the local paper being the workplace out of all local workplaces for which your job skills happen to be most ideally suited.

That’s how I came to be hired as a writer for the niche products department of the Star Tribune, my local paper in Minneapolis, where I started work last week.

What are niche products, you’re probably wondering. They’re the special sections the paper puts out now and then throughout the year, on subjects such as aging, health and wellness, autos, back-to-school preparations. These sections were created, originally, as vehicles for advertising. At one time they contained nothing but advertising. Gradually they evolved, first acquiring bland filler and then better freelance-written pieces. A few months ago, the newspaper made them part of the editorial department, with an editor and now, a writer. Me.

It’s a wonderful job in so many ways. The work, I think, is going to be fun—we’re inventing from the ground up a product for which the bar, historically, has been set low. That lends the enterprise a giddily freeing sort of creativity. How good can we make these things? It’s entirely up to us!

Frankly, as someone who has foot-tall stacks of unread magazines in at least three rooms of my house, 60 books in my Amazon shopping cart (that’s not even counting the ones I’ve already purchased, but not yet read), 23 tabs currently open on my computer screen (which is less than usual, actually), a dining room table covered with newspapers and other assorted pieces of paper with words on them, I have no interest in foisting additional writing on the world unless I can make it as worth reading as possible. That’s the fun challenge of the job.

Also, the job is part time, a great way to segue back into the workforce. I can schedule my 25 hours a week just about whenever I’d like (“The only thing I can tell you for sure is that you can’t do them all in one day,” said my easygoing editor), which makes my work-family balance relatively easy to maintain (and by “easy” I mean “impossible,” though by "relatively," I mean "slightly less impossible than if I worked a rigid full-time schedule"). And I can fill my so-called “free time” with freelance assignments and personal projects like essays, a memoir and, er, blogging.

Put it this way: If this job had been available 15 years ago, I might never have given up a steady paycheck for freelancing in the first place.

Oh, there are a few downsides. Salaries in the niche products area are capped about midway up the guild scale—to keep the products competitive with similar publications—so although my hourly wage is actually a bit higher than it was 15 years ago (and much higher than the wage offered by literally all of would-be employers who ultimately rejected me), my paycheck will still be smaller than if I worked, as I used to, as a regular newspaper reporter. Because I’m part time, I don’t get health insurance, so for now I’m stuck continuing to throw away $200 a month for a private policy with a deductible so high that the only way I’ll ever receive benefits is if something terrible happens to me. And although writing for sections designed to be profitable seems to me a perfectly valid strategy for practicing journalism in the face of the industry’s current business-model crisis, you can probably guess that mine is not the highest status job in the newsroom. I may not win a Pulitzer anytime soon, and don’t look for my picture on the side of a bus.

But so what? It’s a better job than all of the jobs I interviewed for, better than most of the jobs I sent resumes to, better than most of the jobs in the entire world, for that matter. In fact, for me right now—and, as I say this, I’m knocking furiously on the laminated particleboard or whatever it is my desk is made of—this job feels ludicrously perfect.

An open letter about scolding mothers

2011-03-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

About all I know about Kelly Oxford is that she's funny, Canadian, and says funny things on Twitter. I'm not sure how I wound up following her. but I'm glad I do.

She's foul mouthed and brash and sometimes unkind ("How old were you when you realized Robin Williams wasn't funny?"—probably around 35, I think—and "Weird that as an adult, all the emotion I'm hearing in Madonna's 'Crazy For You' is Madonna hoping she hits all the notes and can hold them.") and she makes me laugh ("Your kid’s ready to come out of diapers when she yells, 'Hey, guys I’ll be down soon, I just need to get Mom to change my diaper' Right?"), often because many of her tweets hold both humor and a grain of truth ("Anyone who says 'I'm a bitch before I get my coffee' is a bitch after they get their coffee too.").

Oxford tweets things that "nice women" don't often say and that "nice mothers" hardly ever do, though she has small children ("Older 2 kids better sharpen up because the 2yr old yelled, "YOU GO GIRL!!" to her Dad in this restaurant and now she's my favorite.").

Kelly Oxford

I suppose anyone who dabbles that close to the edge of decorum gets a lot of complaints. A few days ago, apparently, she got some when she made a joke about, of all things, Victoria Beckham's thinness. On her blog, Oxford writes an open letter to this complainer:

Yesterday I tweeted something like, “I wonder how many waiters served a pregnant Victoria Beckham and think to themselves ‘Eating for one are we?’”

But I erased it because it was brought to my attention that Joan Rivers already said “Congratulations to Victoria Beckham, who’s pregnant with her fourth child! She’s finally eating for one.”

You then sent me many, many messages on Twitter which said, and I paraphrase:

This isn’t funny. I hope your children grow up with a good sense of body image. What you say and do as a parent is what your children learn

Oxford proceeds to shred the complainer's argument, making a lot of good points, most not directly applicable to the experiences of those of us who don't regularly crack celebrity jokes to our 100,000+ Tweeps.

But a few apply to my own life, and maybe yours if you've ever received (or issued!) criticisms, snap judgments, and faultfinding about your (or someone else's) mothering or life choices. I wrote about this once, and wish I'd included lines like these:

You are the reason that mothers feel as though they cannot be themselves. Why women who aren’t mothers question their ability to raise a child and fear losing themselves

Oh, and this part is relevant, too, if any of those criticisms you've heard involve your kid having "an ounce of personality" (or a pound, or a ton):

... That any ounce of personality must be squashed in order to raise ‘good’ and ‘proper’ and ‘kind’ children. That’s bullshit.

Toxic comments on the "mommy" essay

2011-03-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Yikes. I just got through skimming the comments on the WSJ essay I extolled in my last post. With the exception of a few shining jewels of polite or even enthusiastic agreement, they are overwhelmingly critical and in many cases downright nasty.

Which, God knows, is not atypical in anonymous internet comments, especially in connection with articles about child-rearing or motherhood (more on that in a moment). Anyway, after reading them I was moved to dwell on this issue yet again to point out three things:

1.) Approximately half of the comment posters missed the essay's point entirely. They seemed to think Brodesser-Akner was complaining about her children calling her "mommy." Which I thought she made clear was not the problem. Her complaint involved the frequent use of the word by other adults to describe her, themselves, mothers in general, or any activity (blogging, working part time, bickering about work-family balance) in which mothers are, or supposedly are, involved.

2.) Those who, after reading an article, are going to take the extra time to log onto the site, compose a comment, and then post it, probably should not have the comment read, "This article was a waste of time." Why not waste a little less time by not adding a comment which is yet another waste of time?

3.) I can understand why, to many people, it may seem no big deal whether a woman with children is referred to (stressing again that we're talking by people other than her kids) as mommy, mother, mom, mama, ma, female parental unit, person of maternity or member of the child-rearing community. And sure, compared to, say, what’s happening in Japan, it isn't. But then, neither is probably 99.999 (add a bunch more 9s) of what's on the internet and only a slightly smaller proportion of what's reported in the WSJ, or any publication.

Still, the words we use to describe things actually are important. Media depictions of people and their roles are important. Those things shape our culture and influence the way we view each other and our contributions to society. Try this experiment: Say you're an employer, evaluating two comparable candidates for an important position. Both of their resumes indicate they're currently not in the paid workforce. In the interviews, you ask each what she's been doing. One says, "I work at home, caring for my children." The other says, "I'm a mommy."

All other things being equal, which one are you going to hire?

As I said in my last post, women's roles in business and politics have changed dramatically over just a couple of generations. Women's roles as mothers still lag behind. Mothers pay a wage penalty in the workplace compared to non-mothers with comparable jobs and backgrounds (including women without children and men either with or without children). Women still do the bulk of childcare and housework. As a culture, we're trying to figure out how to reconcile these things, still trying to work out the bugs. That's a big deal, and as we go through that process, the issue of what words we use, along with any number of other details, is indeed important enough to write about.

Dismissing mothers' concerns as "whining" or "overwrought" or "a waste of time" or "silly" or "trivial" or "yeah, yeah, we get it already" is incredibly common—even among people who are otherwise sympathetic to feminist concerns—for reasons I am still trying to understand. I hope to write about this, too, someday, because writing about something is often the best way to make sense of it. (If anyone can suggest a way to, say, google "whining" and determine how often words like those are used to apply to mothers compared to everyone else, I would greatly appreciate it.)

In the meantime, if we want people to take mothers' issues seriously, it doesn't help to refer to them as mommies' issues.

Let's give "mommy" a rest

2011-03-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

There's probably a German word for this: the experience of reading something that precisely expresses some inchoate feelings that have been floating around the edge of your consciousness for a while without your having fully explored them, even though you do intend to do so at some point and maybe write an essay about them, which you now realize is impossible because this other writer has managed to describe said feelings so articulately that even though you're kind of disappointed at the loss of your own essay you go, "Yes! Yes! This!!" and click immediately to your blog to link and post about it. I suggest, Readingfeelingtheregoesyouressaybloggenfreude.

That's the experience I had upon reading Taffy Brodesser-Akner's "Time for a War on Mommy" in the Wall Street Journal's online blogs.

Brodesser-Akner complains about the ubiquitousness of the word “mommy” to describe women with children—especially as a modifier to “track,” “wars,” “blogger,” etc. The label, she argues, does a disservice to everyone involved: to the particular women in question, to mothers in general, and even to their children—who do not, contrary to conventional wisdom, necessarily benefit from growing up under the impression that their maternal parental units’ lives revolve entirely around their existence.

Photo from momlogic.com

Let me just pull a quote or two to give you the gist:

Why are we grown women calling each other Mommy? Is being a mother such a silly avocation that we have to baby it up, stringing it with the hormones and gushy feelings of what our children call us? Does it strike anyone that calling a woman who has had a child Mommy is demeaning and infantilizing? Does it strike anyone that calling philosophical disagreements Mommy Wars is no different than screaming “GIRL FIGHT!” as two strippers go at it in a mud pit?

And

Maybe you think I’m taking this too seriously. But consider this: When we allow our children to name us, a name they use before they can speak, and then we go by that name in the world, are we doing them any favors? When our children see that we are first and foremost a mother, and a mother in their terms, I believe they suffer.

I have long hated the use of the word "mommy" by anyone but my kids (who, sadly, haven't uttered it for at least a decade, and in fact now often upgrade to the crisply mature “Mother”).

As someone who longs to dignify the role of motherhood—to spread the idea that although, yes, we often spend an inordinate portion of our days watching cartoons and managing poop, caring for children is ultimately an important project, one among many important projects in which we are engaged—I find the word “mommy” demeaning and condescending. To me, it sends the message that a being involved with children is silly and trivial and babyish. And so, it implies by extension, am I.

By the way, like Brodesser-Akner, I wrote a Salon essay that ran under a headline with the word “mommy” in it. But in that case, the subject’s mommyishness was the whole point—I was talking about a phenomenon (schmaltzy mass-emails about motherhood) that in itself was demeaning, condescending, trivializing, etc. etc. I was fine with that.

So I disagree with Rachel Larimore who, writing for Slate's XX factor, half agrees with that "mommy" is overused but pooh-poohs Brodesser-Akner's annoyance as overwrought. Larimore skirts the edge of arguing that what words we use to describe things don’t much matter. Which seems a strange position for a writer to take.

“And really, aren’t the terms mommy wars and mommy track largely creations of the media?” Larimore asks. Well, yeah. Is someone who writes a blog for an online politics and culture magazine seriously arguing that if some term’s widespread use is confined mainly to the media then we can safely ignore it, confident that it has zero effect on anybody's actual lives or their perceptions of things?

Larimore also notes that fathers "don’t sit around wringing their hands about it all or devout thousands of column inches to the issue." Right. Maybe that has something to do with stay-at-home mothers outnumbering stay-at-home fathers about 34:1, with even mothers with full-time jobs still doing the lioness’s share of work at home. Maybe it is related to the fact that, although fathers are unquestionably changing more diapers than they did a generation or two ago, in that same time many many many more mothers are working outside the home (sorry, too rushed to look up statistics; might actually be more than three "manys") while still struggling to get their domestic lives to catch up from 1963. In any case, are a few thousand column inches here or there really too much to ask, considering they're analyzing one of the most dramatic social changes of all time?

By the way, I noticed, among the comments, one by a poster named Taffy forlornly asking, “Was my comment removed for a reason?”

I don’t know if that’s THE Taffy, as in Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the author of the WSJ piece. I don't know if Slate actually removed Taffy's comment, or why. But I'd like to let The Taffy know—as well as, really, any Taffy, along with people not named Taffy —that your comments (including, needless to say, comments defending any and all uses of "mommy") are welcome below!

Vacation? What vacation??

2011-03-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

A few of the commenters over on WBUR who heard my "Here and Now" program earlier were a bit put off by my comparing staying home with kids to a luxurious vacation, both on the air and in the accompanying essay.

Frankly, I just don't understand their confusion.

What are you other SAHMs trying to tell me -- that your kids don't feed you grapes and fan you with palm fronds every day while you lounge on the beach watching Oprah and eating bon bons?

Just kidding, of course! Bon bons are much too fattening.

Seriously, I can bring up an image of myself on a typical day at home, especially when my boys were small, standing knee deep in scattered toys, the kids running around yanking curtains off the windows and throwing scrambled eggs on the ceiling between fist fights, me holding an overloaded basket of laundry, looking at a sink full of dirty dishes, my throat hoarse from yelling ...

What, that's not how you like to spend your luxurious vacations?

To clarify. I didn't mean "luxurious vacation" in the sense of, well, luxurious. Or, even, technically, involving vacation. Not as in time away from work, anyway. Because of course, caring for children is hard, hard work. The hardest work I've ever done. Times 10.

(Quick anecdote: I used to be a newspaper reporter. My ex-husband was, and still is, a newspaper reporter. He would come home after I'd had a long, hard day with the kids, and have the nerve to complain about his job. I'd say, "Look. I've done your job. I know it can be hard. But one thing I can say is that I never ended a day of newspaper work with a throat that was sore from yelling.")

(Poor guy just wanted to vent a little at the end of a long day of breadwinning? No wonder he divorced her, some of you are probably thinking.)

Anyway! What I meant was that being with my children every day was filled with the rich experiences that a wonderful vacation can provide, the priceless memories that stay with you for life. And by luxurious I meant expensive. Possibly unaffordable.

It was my way of attempting to explain how I can believe that women probably shouldn't quit their jobs to stay home with their kids, and at the same time not regret that having done so myself. That's a difficult thing to explain, involving two seemingly contradictory statements -- the financial mistake paired with the lack of regret -- and people don't always understand what I'm trying to say.

That's OK. I'll keep trying. That's what we're here for!

Did you stay home with kids? Do you regret the decision, or cherish the time or both? Or, if you continued working, do you have any regrets in the other direction? How do you like to spend your luxurious vacations? Comments on all of the above or any other seemingly contradictory issues are more than welcome!

Welcome, "Here and Now" listeners/website readers!

2011-03-10T12:06:00.000-08:00

My interview NPR's "Here and Now" program finally aired today (it had been bumped a couple of times earlier for breaking news in Egypt). If you missed it, you can listen to it here. (Click the button near the top of the page.)

For those of you who are visiting after hearing the broadcast, welcome! This is a good place to discuss work-family balancing, the financial hazards of stay-at-home parenting, pressures on mothers, and other life choices women make and the cultural context in which they make them.

Feel free to suggest topics, or just write your thoughts. Glad to have you here!

P.S. If you like the "Here and Now" segment, you might also enjoy a call-in program I did recently on Minnesota Public Radio with law professor Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law and author of Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter. You can hear it here.

Other People's Parenting

2011-03-08T17:57:00.000-08:00

My friend and editor (frenditor? nah, sounds too robotic) Jennifer Niesslein has written a wonderful essay in the spring issue of Brain, Child, which she co-founded and co-edits, about the power of Other People's Parenting.

In "The Village: How Other People Influence Your Parenting," Jennifer talks about the ways that our social networks—not the online ones, like Facebook; the real-life ones, like the parents of the kids who go to school with your kids—can affect our parenting behavior, causing us to throw extravagant kid birthday parties (or disapprove of them), punish our children for mouthing off by dabbing hot sauce on their tongues (or be horrified by the practice), and so on.

So true! It's part of what I was trying to get at in my 2005 essay, "Volvo Trash," in which I wrote about owning a Volvo that was respectable on the outside but a trash can inside, about living in a Volvo-loving neighborhood but feeling more like ... well, maybe a bit more like the Mazda Protégé that I eventually acquired instead (and which, 10 years later, is, as of last night, totaled; but that's another story).

I so remember how much my parenting, especially when my children were small, was influenced by what I felt my parenting community—progressive, educated, NPR-listening types—would deem appropriate. As I put it in that essay:

Toy guns were out, of course. Network television was frowned upon, the Disney Corporation suspect, fast food restaurants questionable from many angles: nutritional, environmental, vocational, culinary, aesthetic.
Which do you like better, McDonald’s or Burger King?” my son once asked a neighbor kid.

“Our family,” the girl replied loftily, “does not eat fast food.”

Again, I understood the reasoning and even concurred. But half-heartedly. Without television and Disney videos, I never would have got dinner made or read an entire newspaper. Those indoor playlands at fast-food restaurants offered precious rainy-day recreation—and reading time for me—for the price of a couple of burgers. In a weak moment in the toy aisle, I allowed Jack to select a plastic gadget with a trigger that discharged little foam rings.. Don’t call it a gun, I instructed him privately, it’s a space shooter. That made it sound comfortably kitschy, like a weapon a Martian might wield in a ’50s sci-fi movie.

I eventually loosened up, quit worrying about what my parenting community might think about this or that. Partly because I realized, “Hey, my parenting community would frown on a great many of my parenting decisions—screw 'em.” Partly because everybody loosens up as their kids get older.

But I haven't completely escaped the influence of Other People's Parenting. Maybe I never will.

I may have overplayed the James Franco card

2011-03-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

ME (to 16-year-old son): Did you hear that James Franco made it to class at Yale at 9 a.m. the day after hosting the Oscars?

SON (with no apparent enthusiasm): He's a diligent boy.

Yale Daily News via New York Times

ME: It's not so much that he made it across the country. Of course it's humanly possible to get from LA to New Haven overnight. What's interesting is, that's how important he considers his education -- he didn't even use "I just hosted the Oscars" as an excuse to skip class.

SON: Mm-hmm.

ME: And did you know he's also earning a master's at NYU?

SON: An ambitious young man.

ME: That's a full-time program, you know.

[silence]

ME: And just think, meanwhile he also starred in one movie, appeared in several others, wrote a book, had an art exhibit at the Museum of --

SON: -- and learned heart surgery, yadda yadda yadda. OK!!!!!!!

Hmm. Is it possible I overplayed the Franco card? Maybe I should have added that my son would have done a better job as Oscar host.

Welcome, MPR listeners!

2011-02-25T22:49:00.000-08:00

Some of you heard my live conversation Friday on Minnesota Public Radio about the cost of opting out to care for children. The other guest was the estimable Joan C. Williams, author of Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, easily one of the country's leading authorities on gender roles and work-family balance.

The conversation and call-in questions were great. It was exactly my second time being interviewed on the air, my first time live, so I was a little nervous about how we'd fill the hour. But I could have gone on much longer! There's so much to say about this topic.

As usual, I was both heartened and discouraged (heartscouraged?) to hear from call-in parents who've left the workforce to care for family and now feel trapped, permanently unable to get back to work. I'm so sorry we're all struggling, folks, yet so glad to be connecting. I think sharing our thoughts about our situation--talking about why, frankly, it's bullshit--is an important first step. Personally, for a long time I figured my problems returning to the workforce after my divorce were obviously due to my incredible unemployable loserdom rather than anything related to my unpaid caregiving status and gaps in my employment history.

One caller, David, a stay-at-home dad, noted my "sexist" focus on stay-at-home mothers. While there are only about 150,000 SAHDs compared to 5.1 million SAHMs, David definitely has a point, because of course stay-at-home dads struggle, too. In fact, as Joan Williams pointed out, in some ways SAHDs are more stigmatized than SAHMs, because at least mothers are doing what they're "supposed" to do according to gender expectations, whereas fathers have betrayed both their employers AND society's notions of masculinity. Sorry, David, and SAHDs in general, for seeming to disregard you.

By the way, another group briefly mentioned in the MPR discussion is people who opt out to provide care for ailing parents (or other family members). An old friend called recently to say my essay had resonated with her, even though she doesn't have kids, because she had left work to take care of her parents and then had an extremely hard time getting another job. I could relate to this, since I cared for a mother with Alzheimer's for a number of years. My kids were little then, so I did some time as the peanut butter in the sandwich generation. With Alzheimer cases expected to quadruple by 2050, we can expect to find more people in this situation.

So I guess the group we're talking about here, the group whose under-reported needs we're hoping to address, is: Mothers and fathers who leave work altogether or reduce their paid employment significantly to care for children or other family members. Otherwise known as MAFWLWAORTPESTCFCOOFM.

Hmm. Might have to look for a slightly catchier acronym.

For those who missed the MPR conversation, here it is. It's longish (almost an hour), but I think worth a listen, and I'm not the least bit biased.

On the radio again

2011-02-25T06:10:00.000-08:00

I'll be live on MPR at 10 a.m. CST today, with author Joan C. Williams, author of the fabulous "Reshaping the Work-Family Debate," whom I interviewed just a couple of weeks ago for the upcoming spring wiissue of Brain, Child (currently up on the site is the winter issue, which doesn't contain the Williams interview, but does feature an article of mine about one of my fave topics: the widespread confusion of causation and correlation in parenting "science").

MPR's program is a call-in show and will be streaming on the site if you're out of MPR range but interested. I would guess it would be available after the fact, too.

How high would you score as a 1930s spouse?

2011-02-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

I love things like these Marital Ratings Scales from the 1930s, via Alexis Madrigal's blog on theatlantic.com. Wives and husbands score merits and demerits based on their habits – different habits for the wife than for the husband, of course. They offer a glimpse of how marriage and gender roles have and haven't changed in 80 years.

They're even based on actual science! Madrigal quotes the American Psychological Association's magazine,which reports that the chart's developer based the wife scale on interviews with 600 husbands about their wives' annoying traits. No mention of how he compiled the husband-rating chart.

Reading this, I can see why I'm divorced. It's obvious at a glance that my score would put me at “Poor” and possibly the dreaded “Very Poor (Failure).” (What would the consequences have been for a spouse who “failed” back then? The divorce rate was pretty low—about 500 to 600 per 100,000 people in the 1930s, this website says, whereas in 2000 it was “ 9,255 per 100,000 for men and 12,305 per 100,000 for women.” Either spouses were hardly ever “failures” or … well, I can think of other explanations and ways people might have responded to “failure” spouses in the 1930s, and most are either depressing or sickening, so I won’t go there. Sorry.)

Anyway, at one time or another I’ve done most of those bad things, and can’t be relied upon to do the good ones on a regular basis. For example, I haven’t darned a sock in years (specifically, all of the years I've been alive) and I serve meals on time only if by “on time” you mean “whenever.” And Merit No. 11, apparently the most important one on the whole questionnaire, worth a full 10 points? “ “Religious—sends children to church or Sunday school and goes herself.” I don’t do that. How interesting, too, that while not going to church is apparently deeply annoying in a wife, in the very next item a wife gets a point if she “Lets husband sleep late on Sundays and holidays.”

One demerit I didn’t get, luckily, was No. 5: “Wears red nail polish.” Plain old red? I agree, men of the 1930s, yawwwnnnn. I prefer tawny or cool shades: green, lavender, brown, gray … Actually, I’ll go with just about any color that would never naturally occur on a mortal earthling.

How would you or your spouse score on these ratings charts? Have the traits that charm or annoy us changed much since then?

A stay-at-home dad reports struggles of his own in the "Letter of the Day"

2011-02-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

The Star Tribune's "Letter of the Day" in the Letters to the Editor section is a response to my essay, by someone who left his job to stay home with his kids and is now struggling to return to the job market. The twist: It's from a dad.

Scott Richardson gave up teaching, "a profession I dearly love," and now "can't even get an interview." He has some alternative plans, which he describes in the letter.

So far, it has one online response, questioning why it was designated "Letter of the Day."

Does society influence our choices about work and family?

2011-02-18T21:28:00.000-08:00

“Where to start,” the woman’s email began.

The woman writing me had so many problems with my essay, the one about the high cost of staying home to raise your kids, that I'm not sure where to start, either, in listing them.

My correspondent couldn’t believe I didn’t fully foresee the financial risks involved in quitting my full-time job in 1996. She scorned as hopelessly unrealistic my endorsement of a stronger safety net for stay-at-home parents. She scoffed at my complaining that I'd been rejected for jobs paying $20,000 less than I made in the mid-1990s (um, they rejected me, keep in mind).

“Your essay tends to come off a bit on the ‘I have the means to hold out for that dream job so I won’t consider anything demeaning,’” she wrote. Having just got home from my shift selling sweaters at Macy’s for $8.75 an hour (one of the two part-time jobs I hold), I sighed a bit at that.

She said she’d checked out the articles on my website, noticed I’d written a lot about the culture of motherhood, and suggested I consider writing about something else instead.

What annoyed her most, though—she kept coming back to it—was that she felt I was blaming “society” for my decision to quit working full time.

“[T]he point I want to make is society does not tell us anything,” she wrote. “We tell ourselves stuff – maybe we let ourselves believe it is society telling us what is important.”

I hadn’t used the word “society” in my essay. And I had stressed that the decision to quit was based on a mixture of external and internal (i.e., emotional) factors.

But my correspondent was absolutely right. I do consider that “society” played a crucial role in my decision to quit my full-time job, and in many mothers' decisions to curtail their paid jobs for the sake of their families.

Oh, I’m not saying society wagged its finger and told me a woman’s place is in the kitchen. Heck, if they had, I’d probably still be at my old job! As an outspoken feminist and liberal, I’m certainly not one to let others tell me what I can and can't do, even Society.

If society had done this, I'd probably still be working full time.

… Or am I?

As I said in my essay, when my sons were babies I read articles and books—many by highly respected parenting experts, like T. Berry Brazelton and Penelope Leach—warning that small children needed to be cared for not by anonymous day-care providers but by a loving figure who showers them with undivided attention.

Who was going to step up? Grandparents? They all lived 1,300 miles away. My then-husband? Well, two things you should know about him. 1, he’s devoted to his job in the extreme. And 2, he didn’t even read those parenting manuals.

When I talk about pressure from “society,” those parenting manuals are among the pressures I mean.

Neither my husband nor I were offered paid parental leave. I took my allotted 12 weeks of unpaid leave, filling in with sick and vacation days. The company offered fathers three months of unpaid leave, too, but I heard of only one father ever using it. My husband took a couple of weeks.

The stingy parental leave benefit? The way men choose not to use it? Again, that’s “society.”

My then-husband and I held demanding jobs; our employers, though ostensibly sympathetic to parents' responsibilities, expected us to make work our priority. Part-time jobs weren’t available. As a nursing mother, I brought an electric breast pump to work and used it twice a day, sitting on a toilet in the women’s restroom.

Work held to be the ultimate top priority? No meaningful part-time jobs? Nursing mothers offered a bathroom? Once again, all society.

When I say “society” influences our decision, I don’t necessarily mean it scolds and lectures. I mean it sends subtle messages. It provides opportunities—or it doesn’t. It claims to offer choices, but doesn't always make those choices feasible or convenient. It encourages certain kinds of attitudes and discourages others.

All of that stuff is society. I'm not saying it makes us all do the exact same thing. I'm saying that we make our choices within that framework. And my point is, if we don't like the framework, we can always change it, because society is us.

If my correspondent is reading this, I would guess that at this point she would tell me I’m unreasonable to expect any change. Among people who have disliked my essay, there’s a faction who seem to feel it’s wimpy or snooty or whiny or overprivileged all of the above to expect society—workplaces, parenting manuals, day-care centers, public policy, employers—to make life any easier for parents or mothers to balance their sometimes dueling roles.

I responded to my correspondent's email, answered some questions and provided a little more information. I invited my correspondent to stop by the blog to discuss it further. I hope she will. I welcome all opinions here, as long as they're politely expressed, as hers were.

Meanwhile, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what "society"—or culture, or reality, or whatever you want to call it—tells mothers about how they balance work and family. What messages do you see in the media? What opportunities or restrictions have played a part in your own choices? Is “society” something you feel you can utterly ignore as you go about your life?

Valuable words to live by, even if you only half remember them

2011-02-16T12:03:00.000-08:00

She had probably said it before. Many times, maybe. It didn’t sound scripted, but she sounded sure and articulate and definite. Since then, in any case, Anna Quindlen has said the thing—or, more accurately, my vague and fragmented half-remembered approximation of the thing—many, many times.

In my head.

Of course, I wish now I had written it down. I hadn’t brought anything to write with, wasn't expecting to pick up any unforgettable quotes. I have nothing against beloved novelist/journalist, but I’m not her biggest fan. A friend asked me to go see her one evening last spring. The talk was free, it was a lovely evening, and the church where she was speaking overlooked Lake Minnetonka at sunset. So why not?

Quindlen’s talk was engaging enough to hold the interest of someone who has never read her novels and has no plans to, has admired her journalism career but never followed her columns closely. Whatever you think of her writing, Anna Quindlen is a smart, eloquent, forceful, high-achieving woman who of course has interesting things to say.

Anna Quindlen speaking—not where I saw her, but at Stevenson University in Maryland, which furnished this photo.

Quindlen read a passage from her novel and spoke a bit, then asked for questions from the audience, which filled the big room. People asked the usual things about writing, journalism, books. (Quindlen is, it turns out, a big Betsy-Tacy fan, so that was exciting for me. She said that whenever she mentions that, about half the people get it and half don't; I'm very definitely one of the getters).

Then somebody asked her something about mothers.

I can’t remember the question. I suspect it had to do with blaming mothers—or rather, in this cordial, affluent, literary, churchy, Minnesota-nice audience, with holding mothers responsible—for some problem or other. Helicopter parenting, maybe; that's the newest trend.

That’s when Quindlen made the statement whose exact words I don't remember but whose gist I have never forgotten. Something to the effect that raising children involves so many “moving parts” that at the end of the day there will always, inevitably, unavoiably, be loose ends, things done less than perfectly. She makes it a philosophical point, she said, not to blame mothers for them.

How true! And how valuable to hear, even if you already know that, even if you already try frequently to remind yourself of it! How nice to hear it confirmed so well, before a big audience, by someone as widely known and well-respected as Anna Quindlen.

So on a day like today, when I have only now got around to returning an email from 11 days ago about an opportunity I’m actually really excited about. Or when I pick up the phone to find the orthodontist's receptionist dryly informing me that my son missed a big appointment this morning. That’s when I think, “Remember that thing Anna Quindlen said about the moving parts,” and I instantly feel better.

Here’s a quote from an interview with Quindlen posted by Random House, which published her novel Every Last One last April, just around the time she visited the church on the lake. It doesn’t sound like the exact words she used that night, but it touches on similar themes.

“There are a million moving parts to raising kids, and you can’t always anticipate them all, especially when the outside world, other people, play such a huge role in their lives as they grow older. With independence there is one kind of pitfall; with overprotection, there is another. And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It’s as simple, and as scary, as that.”

Isn’t that a nice quote to inwardly recite (or at least recall, as I do, in a vague and fragmented way) whenever you’re tempted to kick yourself for screwing up something, which in my case averages at least once a day?

But wait! There’s more! This next part I don't recall her adding that evening in the church by the lake. But in the Random House interview, she notes that when something bad happens involving kids, people tend to point the finger at the mother. Though she is partly referring to some incident in her novel, which as I said I haven’t read, it's not a prerequisite to understanding her meaning, which applies just as accurately to events in real life.

“Of course, when things go wrong, it’s still the mother who gets blamed. Where was she? What was she thinking? … Despite the increased role of fathers in our society, there’s still a sense that motherhood is the big fail if anything goes wrong. Yet it’s independence that is the ultimate success for your kids. If your goal is to build strong people from the ground up, the only way to do that is to give them enough rope to sometimes make their own mistakes.”

Thank you, Anna Quindlen, for being so right, and saying it so well.

Anybody else have some reassuring mantra they dredge up whenever things go wrong?

Welcome, readers from Ireland's The Journal!

2011-02-16T11:12:00.000-08:00

Through the magic of Twitter, I met Jennifer O'Connell (@jenoconnell), editor of the Dublin-based news website The Journal, and who asked to reprint my essay about the high cost of staying home with your kids. The piece ran Sunday in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (and previously on Salon) and was well-tweeted by Strib staffers. All of this has led to my acquiring new Twitter followers and blog visitors with mellifluous Irish names.

Welcome! I look forward to hearing your perspectives, and finding out more about how mothers and parents are (or aren't) supported in Ireland. Even before my piece ran in The Journal, I had received an email or two from Irish readers who'd seen it on Salon, and heard some all-too recognizable tales. So even though some of us say "mom" and others "mum," I know we share some common experiences.

I tend to think of the United States as an outlier among Western countries in terms of its shabby support for working parents, its lack of paid parental leave, insufficient daycare options, workplace inflexibility and so on. I'm eager to hear how the situation compares in other countries. So please, comment frequently, compare your situations to mine, correct any misconceptions you see me writing, and let's pool our knowledge.

Happy Valentine's day!

2011-02-14T11:02:00.000-08:00

I'm working two four-hour shifts at my aforementioned menial jobs, plus have two writing deadlines tomorrow (not to even get into the messy kitchen, lack of clean bath towels and near-empty fridge), so I have to make this brief, but I want to send a big happy VD <3 to all who have stopped by over the past couple of days, most tipped off by my piece in the Star Tribune and on The Journal in Ireland. (Irish visitors, I'd love to hear about how much support families and parents get in Ireland; I thought the United States was a real outlier with our lack of paid maternal leave, uneven child care facilities and rigid workplace rules, but my editor at The Journal says things are tough there, too.)

Once I get these pesky deadlines and work shifts out of the way, I have much more to say about some of the comments my essay has drawn, including our own Scott J.'s, rather strongly worded remarks right here on the blog (a couple of posts ago).

I also want to talk about my interview last week with Joan C. Williams, author of the fabulous Reshaping the Work-Family Debate, and discuss some of her ideas about how families can share responsibilities more equitably.

And I'd like to (a bit belatedly) discuss the survey conducted by VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, indicating that women writers and authors are woefully underrepresented in magazine articles and book reviews, respectively.

But wait -- there's more! Anyway, we have lots to talk about. See you as soon as I can come up for air. In the meantime, help yourselves: