Now I didn’t marry “down”
Nov 28, 2007 Family, Feminism/Politics
That’s what Rona Mahoney says in her wonderful book Kidding Ourselves. She thinks women should marry down. The problem is that everyone then ends up poor. But I think it’s probably a good idea to think it out before you have the baby. Often, the woman just assumes, “Oh, I’ll just have the baby and we’ll have some babysitters and it’ll all be the same.” But it’s not going to be all the same, because children take a lot more time than you think they’re going to and they have a lot of needs that are hard to plan for.
Katha Pollitt interviewed on motherhood and feminism by Ada Calhoun for Babble.com
I definitely didn’t marry down and we’d barely gotten our careers started when Noah came along (we were late bloomers). Still we’ve struggled with gender roles — not within our family but without it.
I stayed home for ten years because that’s really really really where I wanted to be and in some ways that didn’t make sense because I’m also the more ambitious of the two of us. Brett has never been much interested in work for work’s sake and has never had any career-focus whatsoever. He’s been much more punished for this than I was for first staying home or for now working. I’ve had people tell me they thought he must be mentally ill and needed medication (”There’s something WRONG with a man who isn’t providing well for his family!” — this from a feminist!) and I’ve had other people sit me down to tell me that I shouldn’t put up with his lack of ambition (again, from self-described feminists). Yeah, we’ve been broke for a long time and there was a period early on where I blamed him but I realized that Brett was a package — not a buffet. Once I understood that the man I loved was also a man without much ambition, I realized that giving up my ideas about how he ought to be was a lot less painful than giving up him. I just knew that if I wanted a certain amount of stuff, I’d have to help get it and maybe that wasn’t technically “fair” (since I was the at-home parent with all that entailed and he was supposed to be the working parent with all that entailed) but then maybe I needed to get a new definition of fair.
Thing is, once I got to that place in my heart/head I knew that we were going to have to tag-team the way we wanted to live our lives. If I wanted to move to this neighborhood (and I did — we both did) then I’d have to take up the slack. But that was about our family priorities and not “fair.” You know? When you start thinking of your marriage as a team effort (and obviously you both have to see it that way) and you start creating goals together then it’s about getting everyone happy as you move forward and divvying up the work as it makes the most sense instead of keeping track of who’s doing what.
Both of Brett’s brothers are off-the-track guys. Todd is doing who-knows-what (it’s selling cars in Europe now and he’s working on another gig that I can’t even hint at) at any given time and Wick quit teaching so that he could flip houses and hang with his kids while his wife hits the streets as a realtor. Brett has been the most conventional with the 9 to 5 job but his heart was never in it. I’m not sure how his parents managed to raise a trio of latent feminist males but they did.
I’d say it’s harder to be a guy who’s stepping outside of family gender roles than it is to be a woman (I say this pretty flippantly but I appreciate that I’m living outside of a traditionally-minded culture like, say, fundamentalist anything). I feel like I was rewarded for staying home more than chastised — way more people praised us than asked us why we hadn’t bought a McMansion or a second car — and the applause are still drifting in for my working. But Brett? Way more judgment. Way more unkindness. What’s wrong with a guy who never made middle management and didn’t want to? What’s wrong with a guy who’s satisfied hanging with his kids in the park, cooking dinner and scrubbing toilets? People assume he’s here temporarily but truth is, I have no idea what he’ll do when the kids are big and his services are no longer needed.
One Christmas his dad gave him a putter — a golf club — as a symbol of his love of puttering. He’d be perfectly happy having projects for the rest of his life. Remodeling the bathrooms now, the kitchen sometime down the line, adding on in a few years. Who knows? But he’ll never be on a corporate ladder, that I can guarantee and he doesn’t need a paycheck to feel good about his work.
In some ways I feel like I’m living out my green-hair ideals from my teen years. We keep swimming against the tide. Only now it’s not for the shock value but because the tide is going someplace where we don’t want to be. I’m kind of surprised by how conventionally unconventional our lives have turned out to be. Here in the suburbs in our hetero marriage but the homeschooling, the transracial open adoption, the two parents at home, the thrifting to make the budget. I feel like Frank Sinatra because we’re doing it our way and somehow that keeps on working. Crazy.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Awww, I loved this post. It was so moving. You guys are an inspiration.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Interestingly, two of my BILs are the home-focused parent in their respective relationships, and while there has been some shuffling of expectations within the marriages, it seems that the outside world is more critical of their choices. Happily, it’s not about justifying it to the outside world.
And what’s all this striving for upwardly mobile trappings?
I think it’s always hard to swim against the mainstream current in whatever fashion. I really like what you said “swimming against the tide. Only now it’s not for the shock value but because the tide is going someplace where we don’t want to be.” Yes! It’s not following the tide just because it happens to be pushing us that way. I’m so glad that doing it your way keeps working for you. Good inspiration for the rest of us making our non-mainstream choices.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
I do think it’s rough for men whose work values don’t fit the traditional mold. When our son came home, T took his full 12 weeks off from work while I did the take two weeks and go back to the office thing. We were shocked at the comments he got about that choice. People accused him of being lazy and selfish; one person even said he should be fired. Comments I never got when I took my full parental leave after his ended. And most were from people who would have said children benefit from having a stay-at-home parent for as long as possible–apparently they really meant a stay-at-home mom. It was unbelievable.
I love that you and Brett have found what fits you and are making it work. That rocks.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Dawn, I agree with you that it can be harder for the guy who stays home, in this culture. My husband has been the at-home parent far more often than I (I have only been at-home when I was on sabbatical, and for the first few weeks after Mariah was born). When Nick was little and Mark was home with him the playground moms would leave him a wide berth, as if somehow a guy in a playground were automatically suspect. (Yes, it’s pretty conservative here.) We’ve always said our ideal would be two half-time or three-quarter time jobs, but the world so far hasn’t seen fit to reward us with them, so we tag-team instead. I love what you say about the tide, though–that hits it on the head for us as well.
November 28th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
It’s funny how it’s been the people outside our marriage that have helped me get to that same realization - that MD’s worth isn’t in what he brings home. I think it’s part of the culture of my profession though. Swimming against the tide tends to be the norm.
I’m sad to admit that I was angry about it all for a long time. Now I wish he made more because I have more potential to find meaningful part time work than he does, but I’m not angry anymore. We had to work hard to align our goals - I had to adjust down and he had to adjust up, but we’re on the same page now.
November 28th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I also married a putterer. Early on, I used to be frustrated by it, but eventually I realized that if we were both ambitious, there’d be a lot more competition and a lot less support between us. Piper would be a SAHD in a heartbeat if we could swing it.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I can relate to the team thing and shared goals, but for us it’s a mixture. We’re both stay at home working parents, and while it is chaos a lot of the time, it’s working most of the time.
J is very much of the male variety that thinks he should be providing for us as a family, so our working together (and being self employed with irregular paychecks early on) has been a huge adjustment for him on that end, because we truly must be a team to earn our paycheck. That bothers him I know. He left the abundance of high expense accounts and his own assistant and clout! And everyone in his old industry thinks he came to work “for me” because he couldn’t find anything better (we say they are right, that he couldn’t find anything better than being with us). But this life is better than the other life. And when your kids have a life-threatening condition that sure will make you look at things differently.
J’s life is about as far away from where he though it would be from a working perspective, but he wouldn’t change the choices I know. Except he would like to earn more!
November 28th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I’ve often wondered about the enormous burden traditional gender norms place on the man, especially when a woman stays home and the worker becomes the only thing keeping the family out of the poorhouse. We’ve been hearing some of your angst about being the worker in the family. But, it can’t be all roses for the guys, either.
I am not married to a putterer; I’m married to someone like American Fam’s husband, who needs, needs, to succeed at work. It brings financial rewards, but it also makes the balancing of life more complicated. And, again, it’s part of the package.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Hey do those comment counters tell us how many comments we’ve left on your blog. Whee, I appear to be a pretty frequent commenter
November 28th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Good for you guys. Al and I are both pretty unambitious — we both love being home and I thank Whomever every day that he works from home and can help with the kids as much as he does. Keep doin’ it your way, it sounds like it’s working.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
My husband took six months off after we brought our daughter home from China, and I worked part-time freelance while he was off. He loved it, and everyone around was supportive, excited for him, in fact. In the end, it spoiled him for working. He was quite depressed after he went back to the office, and often comes home gloomy, with schemes of how he can stop working. It’s the first time he’s ever been the sole breadwinner (I’ve actually made more money than he has over the years) and he feels a lot of pressure, a sense of being trapped.
I have a hard time enjoying being home with my daughter, knowing that he’s suffering. I had the same problem, which is why I quit my corporate job to freelance a few years ago. I think it will make both of us work harder to find an arrangement where we have more of what we want from life (time with kids, meaningful work).
November 29th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I can tell you from a guy’s perspective that it is hard. I work two days a week so effectively I’m a stay at home dad. Many people have commented about when I’m “going to start taking care of my family” or “get a real job.” I thought raising my child was a real job and it was taking care of my family. Even here in Liberal SF it is expected that men should work.
I’ve had that experience of being watched at the playgrounds. It can be really awkward at some of the playgrounds because not only am I the only man but usually the only caucasian. I’ve learned to not take it too personally and spend the time playing with Little Man.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Bacchus, that got even more awkward when my husband was watching our daughter. They don’t physically resemble each other much and folks always seemed a bit suspicious of a sometimes-scruffy-looking guy watching a little blond girl. Sigh.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Libby & Bacchus, that’s been an issue for Brett, too. He’s very cautious about, say, taking Madison into the bathroom! This summer they were out on a long bike ride on a path by the river. Madison suddenly needed to go potty (like 3-year olds do) and for a second he figured he’d take her off the path but then he realized if someone saw him — white guy helping a little brown-skinned girl in the woods — that it’d be an issue. So they booked back down the path to the porta potty and didn’t quite make it.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Great post!!! Wow, and your previous comment, I’d never thought about that — people having issues with a father who looks different from a daughter taking care of her. Scary.
You know, I’m glad K is ambitious because I’m not really. I’m the one who doesn’t care for work much. And I don’t think it has to do with gender, just personality. I do enjoy being home with the boys, although I think it would be “healthier” for me if I had at least part-time work so I could have more of a routine. Oh well.
December 1st, 2007 at 2:06 am
Great post Dawn. I also married a putterer, which would probably work better if I were more ambitious! As it is we both would prefer to be the stay-at-home parent, so we share - or we did before Mikaela was born. At the moment Chris works 5 days and I ‘work’ (unpaid, but maybe one day…) two, but next July I’ll have to go back to my day job and we’ll share again.
I don’t think he gets the same sorts of flack here that seems to be normal over there (though that may be the city - Canberra - more than the country), but it is certainly the case that neither of our careers have/will advance much since we became part time. Now if I could just start writing best selling novels so we could both stay home (and if I could do that, honestly i think I’d be happy doing it almost full time and letting Chris be the stay-at-home Dad full-time).
It was interesting when Liam was first born and Chris took 6 weeks of paid leave (saved up for that purpose), and people said to him that coming back to work would be like a holiday for him. He thought they were crazy. He still does.