Yesterday was a bad day
1Dec2005 Filed under: Feminism/Politics Author: DawnToday so far is a good day. Today a friend had good (great!) news and I got to see another friend and Madison is sleeping and I’ve had only one fight with Noah. (About cleaning up the spilled crayons in his bedroom that were all over the nice wood floor under his desk just waiting to be ground in by errant tennis shoes. “But I LIKE spilled crayons and it’s MY room!” Much wailing, much gnashing of teeth (his wails, my teeth) but now we’ve made up.)
On both my writing lists some people are talking about the Linda Hirshman piece about how stay-at-home moms are not such hot feminists (letting down that feminist dream and all). This is one of those times where I go, “I should be blogging that.” And probably at the beginning of my blogging career, I would have. Now I just don’t care. Most of the times when these articles come up in the NYT or some smart magazine I know they’re not talking about me. I didn’t walk away from a great career, I didn’t walk away from a great degree. There wasn’t anybody to let down. And now — as luck would have it and trust me, it’s all luck — I have more of a career now than I ever would have had if I had stayed in social work.
I’m tired of talking about Motherhood with a capital M anyhow. I’ve been doing it (being a mother) long enough now that it no longer seems like a radical shift. I mean that first year or two? I was all over thinking way too hard about how it changed me. How it made me more this or that and how the patriarchy and the formula companies were out to keep me down. I think it was kinda like when I first started claiming my feminism and suddenly everything was a metaphor for rape. It was necessary to be hyper-aware for awhile before I could settle in and find my place.
I don’t really care what Hirshman has to say about my decision and I don’t have any desire to defend it. Whatever. I’m glad I’m home. I’m glad it’s a decision I made freely. I don’t care that it’s a traditional gender role and I wouldn’t have given up doing what I want to do just to make a political statement.
Besides nowadays I’m just way too busy mindfucking adoption. And in five years, I’ll be all ranty about something else. So it goes.
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6 Responses to “Yesterday was a bad day”
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About Me
I have two kids and a delightfully odd husband, Brett. My children are Noah (born to us in 1997) and Madison (born to her first mom, Pennie, in 2004 and brought to our family through a domestic, open adoption). They are my inspiration and also the reason I don't get more done around here.
I'm a writer and sometimes I get published, which is a nice thing. I write for joy, I write for money and when I'm very lucky, both things happen at the same time. My work appears in national publications including Yoga Journal, Disney's Family.com, Utne, Wondertime, Brain Child and Salon. Currently I am working on a book about my daughter's adoption and seeking representation for the proposal. I also own Smart Cookie Communications with my husband.
Twitter:
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- Test fireworks going off at game. Kids are getting antsy.
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- @mombrain CONGRATULATIONS! Glad that bus finally hit you! :)
- Fresh blog: It's raining http://www.thiswomanswork.com/?p=3442
Brooklyn Mama
December 1st, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Exactly. That’s kinda how I’m feeling too. After two years of being a mom, I’m sort of over the Motherhood thing. And as far as the “stay at home trend,” I guess I’ve never felt so connected to the mainstream that I can really consider myself one of those people they write about.
Tiny Coconut
December 1st, 2005 at 5:50 pm
Heh. What cracks me up about debates like this (”cracks me up” being a nice way of saying “makes me want to learn how to use an automatic rifle”) is how they have absofreakingnothing to do with the real world. And I come out on the “right” side of this one–looking all feminist-ish and fighting the good fight and all that, because I am the primary (read: most of the time, sole) breadwinner in my family. Hooray for me! Except, of course, for the fact that it makes me miserable to go to work every day, and that I don’t WANT to be the only one responsible for our family’s upkeep, and that I take truckloads of psychotropic drugs on a regular basis to stop my brain from totally leaping out of my head in rebellion.
What is all this crap about whether what any person–male, female, young, old–wants is RIGHT or WRONG in some larger global sense? My lesbian friends argue over who will get to stay home with their daughter–does that make them traitors to the cause? Or is that OK because they’re not cowtowing to “the man.” I don’t get it. I really don’t. It’s like some kind of social autoimmune disease, these women who judge other women based on how they find their happiness and the passion.
Kim
December 1st, 2005 at 5:50 pm
This isn’t totally related, but it is. One of my clients recently launched a site and is launching a print magazine called Lifestyle CEO (http://www.lifestyleceo.com/). She never uses the word “feminism,” but much of what she does is about empowering women in home and business, and by business, she means working for yourself. I’m not very good at explaining it, but she is, if you visit the site.
And it just now came to me that she’s probably looking for writers.
afrindiemum
December 1st, 2005 at 9:50 pm
i’m so right there with you. i was all feminist this, gender that for six some years. i’m done trying to be the ideal feminist. i’m me. i’m a mom. i want to stay at home. ain’t nothing not feminist about that.
i’m on the verge of being done with being all over adoption after about four years. i mean, i’m always all over adoption. but i’m done with so many pieces these days.
Lisa V
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:38 am
I always have considered it such a luxury that I was able to make my primary occupation be the nurturing of my daughters. Now when I feel like working some, that is what I do. Both were my choices.
My obsessions- TTC, miscarriage, adoption, education and now I think middle age will be next.
Felicity
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:04 am
Hey, it’s me. One thing I do have is lots of experience doing lots of things…I’ve been a mother for 15 years now and renewed that license six years ago. I’ve been broke enough to be disenfranchised. I’ve been part of the upper middle class, financially…I’ve stayed home with my kids, and I’ve worked.
I’m interested in the oting-out debate going on recently but more from an intellectual stimulation position than from seeing it as something that affects me personally.
Somewhere I read this quote and I kind of have used it as my guiding parenting principle and even that has been MY choice. Other people do it their way. Maybe it’s age that makes us more accepting of ourselves and others’ choices?
Here is the quote: “Your kids are either the center of your life, or they’re not. The rest is commentary.”