Not enough options
Jul 23, 2003 Feminism/Politics
Holly and Roni are having some discussion on their blogs about the crisis of home vs. work as a feminist mother and I wanted to take my comments here.
I think the problem is, well, that grizzled old nuisance: patriarchy. We’ve modeled our world on the industrial idea that there is work and there is home and never the twain shall meet. What’s that thing that Lloyd Dobbler says? “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”
Even most jobs that don’t repair, sell, buy or process follow a schedule and organization based on jobs that do repair, sell, buy and process. As a social worker, I had similar hours to someone selling insurance (I got paid a lot less). Our work lives are based on the premises that jobs and home must remain separate and that we all have wives at home to tend the hearth.
Despite the fact that hearths do need tending (not to mention that children need raising and some of our older folks need to be cared for), that work isn’t seen as work. Well, at least not important work — not real work. And those of us who do it are basically told that we should do it out of the goodness of our hearts without any payment or formal acknowledgement. Sure we get Hallmark cards if we stay and guilt if we don’t, but we don’t get social security or insurance and our staying at home is dependent on our partnership with a “productive” worker.
What’s the other option? What if your not partnered or your partner doesn’t make enough money or you don’t want to be segregated into that separate “at home” society? Then you go to a job based on a patriarchal, capitalist definition of what work is and you find other people to act as “wives.” You hire people to care for the kids or the old folks, you depend more (as I do — thank goodness for Trader Joe’s) on other people to make your food, and you keep your home life compartmentalized as the work/home dichotomy dictates.
The burden for finding a way to survive this dichotomy falls squarely in the laps of women who are trying to keep their sanity and their solvency.
I would venture to say that most mothers would like to have a life outside of their kids. Sure there are at-home moms out there who embrace their role as homemaker and shine at it, fulfilled in every way just as there are working moms who are able to focus on their careers without guilt or contention. Great, good for them. Now for the rest of us. Most of us, I’d say, want to be able to make our choices according to our hearts without the barriers of budgets and professional realities. I would say that if women could create their own worlds, most of us would find ways to have careers that afford us much more control over how much time and energy that we give to them.
I think that in many ways I have the perfect situation: at-home mom by day, telecommuting writer/editor by night. It’s not perfect — I feel like I’m losing my mind a lot — but it works most of the time. I’m grateful that my career of choice is not surgeon or astronaut or restaurant manager because it would be hard to convince someone to let me do those at home. I’m also grateful that I live in a city/state where we can live on less so that if this job dries up, we can still feed and clothe everyone. I wish everyone had the options that I do.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could start a massive movement to change things? Wouldn’t that be swell? The problem is that most of us are so damn busy just trying to keep our heads above water that we really don’t have time to go out there and convince everyone to value mothering enough that they want to create work systems around raising kids instead of around selling widgets. Our hands are kinda full here what with rocking the cradle and running the factory and waitressing at the diner and staffing the hospitals. And then They (you know, keepers of the social mores with which we live) keep us so busy arguing over what makes a good mom — does she live for herself or for her family? — that we’re too guilt-ridden and defensive to band together and support each other.
Those of us who find work fulfilling need to be able to do it without sacrificing our family-life. Those of us who find home fulfilling need to be able to do it without sacrificing our family’s budget. Those of us (the majority I’d say) who want both work and home should be able to manage that, too. Jobshare, flex time, maternity leave are sorry consolations; I think we need to jettison the 9 to 5 mind-set and start over from scratch.
I have more to say about this but I think that’s a good start and I have work to do tonight.
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Tags: feminist
First day of my new life
Jul 22, 2003 Writing
I have all the zeal of a new convert. Today I woke up early, worked-out, spent the day with Noah and didn’t get on the computer until later. Lookie that, it works! Of course it was only the first day and the first day of a new habit is always — in my experience — the easiest.
I did fall asleep after I came home from working out but only for about 20 minutes and I blame it on this blasted cold. And I did end up having to boot up before my schedule dictated because of an interview I was waiting to hear back on. Tomorrow should be a bit more hellish due to appointments and the like but at least I’ve begun trying to stop my descent into chaos. That’s something, right?
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Tags: Noah, working out
Summer colds & schedules
Jul 20, 2003 Writing
I’ve been sick for the past few days and it’s obviously stress related. Blech. Stupid sickness.
I created my loose office hours for the next week and I’m going to try to stay off of the computer until 3 or 4pm. I asked Noah if he was missing me because I was working so much and he said not really. Well, I miss him so that’s good enough for me but it did reassure me that I could start work a couple of hours before Brett gets home since Noah clearly doesn’t mind being neglected. Why, I’m neglecting him right now and he’s wandering through the house singing.
I was also able to salvage the interview gone bad that caused my fit of weeping last Wednesday. It’s not an assignment I asked for or particularly want — it’s about a subject I know NOTHING about and am not sure how to research — but it dropped into my lap and I’m not at a point in my life where I can say no to extra money.
I stayed up extra late with my girlfriends on Friday night. We had a fondue party only the fondue was a bit of a nightmare (don’t ask); fortunately my friends make for a good party even when snack disaster strikes.
It’s strange how we used to be a group of women with babies in our laps and this stunted focus. Everything was our babies our babies our babies. We were all nursing and micro-managing their little lives and it felt like our whole world was our nurslings and everything else was something of an intrusion. Now the oldest child in our group is 8 and the youngest is 1+ and Real Life is much more present. School choices, marriage struggles, job challenges, fertility/infertility — I’m glad we’re still friends. I hope I know these parents and their kids on into Noah’s teen years because I don’t imagine that I’ll need them any less in the next few decades.
I also love how our kids have grown along-side each other. One of Noah’s closest friends is a little girl we’ve know since she was a tiny sling baby and Noah was a toddler. There was a time when they didn’t want to play together much and now they’ve become good friends again. I love to see them play together and watch their tolerance and affection continue. Noah is very fond of her. He talks about her tenderly and before she comes over, he makes sure that her favorite toys are accessible.
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Tags: Brett, Infertility, Noah
How not to get a writing job
Jul 18, 2003 Writing
1. Send a bad query. Not only a bad query, an inappropriate query. Send it in the body of your email with an intro that basically says, “Look what I can do, you should hire me!” Then paste in a terrible essay with misspellings, grammar mistakes and no basic understanding of how the English language works. This essay includes sterling lines such as, “Yah honey I know that I have a few extra pounds on me, hmmm wonder why that is. lol Well it is almost time to get me to the hospital for weight control.”
2. Get a short, polite rejection.
3. Add the editor (me) to your conservative religious forward list and then send the editor (me again) a conservative religious email saying that Christians are persecuted because off the separation of church and state and that this is a Christian country and dammit, non-Christians should just shut up and be grateful for being here.
4. When editor (did I mention this is me) responds by saying, “Take me off of your forwarding list, this is way unprofessional not to mention offensive to me as a non-Christian.”
5. Respond with a half-assed apology that includes something about how sorry you are that the editor (ME!) doesn’t support religious freedom and that as a “Christian Jew” [sic] you think the editor is mistaken.
True story. So Jackie, when you worry that you’re being a nuisance? Know that your well-constructed, valid emails are a breath of fresh air.
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Tags: essay
Schedules
Jul 18, 2003 Writing
I have got to get it together.
I had a nervous breakdown yesterday. An interview got screwed up on a last minute assignment I was given and I cried for over an hour. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t the interviewees fault. It was, as Cole Porter famously said, just one of those things but it brought me to wracking, snotty sobs. Clearly, I’m way too stressed out.
I’ve been worried anyway because contract jobs are by definition (contract) scary. Mine will be up in October and whether or not they’ll hire me is anybody’s guess. I don’t deal much with the powers that be at the home office; I talk to fellow underlings and go through my boss, herself a contract worker. She tries to give me a heads up on how things are going but really — since she telecommutes, too — it’s hard to say.
Part of me wanted the job to go away in the fall. I like the work an awful lot but there’s a lot of it and I haven’t been good at organizing things. So now I’m going to try organizing things and see if it’s possible to stay on even if I take some time off when the baby arrives.
Here are my plans:
1) Work out three times a week so I don’t go insane. I’m going to do this in the mornings before Noah wakes up. I joined a gym again because I think having a routine outside of the house will make that easier.
2) Create office hours and stick to them. No work-related phone calls (I’m getting caller ID to facilitate this); no email, no nothing. It’s too easy to wander in here to see if I’ve heard back from someone and stay an hour. If I do a better job of segregating work and home, I think I won’t feel as scattered.
3) Get back to “lesson” planning my activities with Noah on Sunday mornings. I’ve let things slide and we’ve been missing out on some cool stuff this summer.
4) Start saying no to people. Because I work at home, people don’t realize that I am, in fact, working. Working really hard. I need to explain to them that I am.
4) Continue to get things really full up in my editorial calendar. If they don’t re-hire me, the writers will weather the transition well because it’ll give the next person time to learn the ropes before they have to start pulling stuff in again. If they do re-hire me, I won’t be in hell when the baby comes and I need to pull back for awhile.
I know this will be hard with a baby but frankly, freelancing would be worse and we need the money. We’re putting my salary away right now instead of working on our “debt pay down” program so that if my contract isn’t renewed, I’ll still be able to take some time off.
We’ll see.
But for those of you who write for me, know that I’ll be answering emails in a less timely manner for my sanity’s sake. You will hear from me eventually, I promise.
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Tags: Noah