I’m still rabidly listening to audiobooks, but so many of them are forgettable YA scifi books I just don’t feel the need to write about. There was one vampire one and I thought I could write about my annoyance with vampires… but in a Post Twilight world that seemed like just throwing more crap onto the fire to burn, and after awhile that makes the fire less glowy and comforting and more smelly and irritating. Besides, I do love Buffy…
Then something happened this weekend and while I’ve been trying to let it go I just can’t. It’s making me think I may just wade into something I usually avoid: controversy.
Here is how it played out, sitting outside by a bonfire with my boyfriend, his family and some friends the conversation turned to parenting. I’m not sure how this happened, as only one of the people present was a parent anyhow. It was typical “kids these days” railing, things like “…they think they can just plunk ‘em down in front of these electronics…” Or “These kids think they can get away with murder nowadays…” I’m guilty of this sort of thing on occasion, saying something like “My parents would never have let me act like that and get away with it.” but mostly, not having kids myself, I do try my best to reserve judgment. And while it does pain me to look over and see an entire family out to eat staring at their cell phones instead of each other, I look at my phone all the time as sort of a nervous tic myself so how can I judge? And…personally I think a few hours of an ipad game (particularly in say, a waiting room or at an adult party) is not going to destroy any lives, and in fact can probably be a good thing for the little ones.
In general though, I try to let this sort of thing wash over me and then move on to something I know more about. In this case I did open my mouth, and started to make a comment that was founded on exactly no facts or knowledge. Always a good idea… What I started to say was “I think the general culture of parenting has changed to be focused much more on positive reinforcement rather than shaming and discipline, and while some kids may be bratty because of this other kids I’m sure are more self confident and happier. Maybe it will balance out in the end. Or maybe the next generation will be ultra strict as a backlash…” Ok, also, maybe what I would have said in front of that fire wouldn’t have been so coherent. One reason I try to bite my tongue is that I get really emotional in these moments and my thoughts get jumbled and my words harsh or irrational. This, as I said, is also something I happen to know NOTHING about. However, I wasn’t allowed to finish my train of thought, instead I got to “I think the general culture of parenting…” before being cut rather viciously off by the only parent present.
“PARENTING.” she said bitterly. “What do you mean? No one parents anymore. They just leave their kids with the nanny and let them do it. They’re all out working.”
What I did then, for a multitude of reasons, was hold my tongue, and say “I don’t think that’s true or fair.” with what restraint I could. Then I let it go.
But it keeps coming back to me now, even days later, and it makes me mad.
Let’s rewind now, to a tiny, sweaty college dorm room at one of the self-proclaimed most liberal liberal arts schools in the country. You can imagine the feelings here are the exact opposite of the mother who sat by the fire just this past weekend, a complete 180. Here there is only sneering and lip curling reserved for a woman who would harness herself so completely to the “shackles” of motherhood that she would give up her career for it. How could anyone in this enlightened day and age even consider such a thing? In this scenario I’m also suddenly forced into an extreme viewpoint. Now… I know for a fact I was never the eloquent one in these scenes, in fact I would say I was usually drunken and incoherent, but since I’m writing this I’m going to re-write history a bit and time travel a bit and put in my own mouth words I would have said if I was less emotional and less full of PBR.
And that is the point I’m trying to get to. Something that is not arguable is that many woman in the past fought and even died for each other’s, and our own, freedoms and rights. This freedom should include the right to be able to choose what’s best for you and for your family as a whole, and in some cases that may be deciding that you WANT to stay home with your kids, in other cases it won’t be, but isn’t that the entire point? That we have both “freedom” and “rights”? What good is decades of feminism and screaming about equal rights if we are unable to decide we want to stay home and raise our kids ourselves, without being shamed or looked down on by women who have decided their career is important too, and that they will continue to pursue and work on that. And vice versa. Women who do important things with their lives and dedicate themselves to their jobs shouldn’t be looked down on either for not staying home with the kids. I’m sure some of this pain and shaming comes from men, but most of what I have seen of it is coming from other women. Then they turn around and shame other women and it goes on and on and on.
Part of why I didn’t open my mouth that night is I didn’t want to get in a fight about this. Around the fire, I know without a doubt that I would have been told that staying home with the kids is RIGHT and continuing with your career is WRONG. In dorm rooms I was told the same thing, but the other way around.
Now let’s rewind again, to a much more recent past. My male coworker’s wife recently had a baby. He took a week’s vacation and while he was gone things in my work group got hectic. As a result, the day he got back into the office I spent most of the time at his desk, going over things we were behind on. This took much, much, longer than usual because about every half hour some woman would come up and start telling him exactly what his wife should or shouldn’t be doing with the baby. One woman insisted that women who didn’t breast feed should be thrown in jail for child abuse. Another woman basically said that women who DID breast feed should have the same done to them. Both women argued that their preferred method was “the only way to go” and that the other method was tantamount to letting the infant starve to death. One woman advised mixing formula into the breast milk for more “nutrients” and “health” (clear and unrefutable scientific advice I’m sure). And this is just on the issue of feeding. On and on they went on crying, on burping, on napping. By the end of the day I was exhausted and pissed off, and I didn’t even have an infant at home. Why couldn’t these people just come up to the desk and say “Congratulations, your new little one is cute”? Why in the world did they each feel the need to dogmatically argue some child rearing point instead of just giving their simple well wishes? For surely these women meant well? Or did they? And maybe that’s the point… They saw in the new father a willing and impressionable audience and they climbed right up on their favorite soap box in order to be the first in his head with their opinion. None of them actually seemed to have the slightest intention of actually helping this new mother and daughter.
Now, I’m not a mother so I don’t know, maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I cannot understand or comprehend the urge to scream at someone about breast milk for hours because I am lacking some kind of vital maternal instinct…
Ah you see what I did there?
In the end it all comes down to fear. And shame. When I hear the mother from my first story around the fire go on about how EVERY woman feels WONDERFUL at six months pregnant, and how I couldn’t possibly understand that until I experience this WONDERFUL feeling, the emotions I feel are fear and shame. The same I felt sitting at my coworkers desk listening to arguments about breast milk. I have never been particularly thrilled or excited by the idea of child birth or by babies in general. I don’t like holding them, I don’t like thinking about a little person growing inside of me, and when my mother tried to watch the British show “Call the Midwife” with me the other day I was close to running screaming out of the room. The fact is I’ve always thought of the whole baby thing as big and terrifying and icky and something I’m not positive I want to do. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to, or am not curious about it, but it’s not exactly all rose colored glasses for me. For most of my life this has been fine. “Nowadays” as I’ve been saying, there are a lot of girls who share my feeling and are open about it, but recently, as I get older, a lot of these girls suddenly have babies and or actively want them and I’m feeling more and more alone.
By the same token, this mother who insists pregnancy is the most wonderful feeling on the planet, has never been able to have a career and didn’t have the choice and opportunity I was lucky enough to have to go to school and pursue a study that I love. I know that now, when she’s faced with trying to provide her own daughter with that same choice I had, she too feels fear and shame at “only” having stayed home to raise the kids.
I want to tell her I admire her for the three wonderful kids she’s raised, all of whom I happen to care deeply about and who I think are great. I want to tell her I’m impressed with how easily she swoops up infants and knows what to do with them, while I hold them as grimly as though they might turn into goo at any moment.
Yet I don’t say these things. Sadly, it feels like the gulf between us is just too vast to cross. Though I might be still relative young, the life choices I made have already been too dramatically different from hers. And if I do have children (IF!) I will almost certainly want to continue working outside of the home. It’s something I’m lucky enough to have the freedom to do, and it’s something I want to do. I dread the day I would ever have to tell her this, I feel certain her reaction would be horror, and mine would be total shame and misery. And I won’t pretend that my own decision, the more important and liberating one of whether or not I even want children at all, isn’t colored not just by this woman’s reaction but by the knowledge that I will meet for the rest of my life woman of like mind and will essentially be tortured by them, over and over again.
In the end, I suppose all I’m saying is moms, stop and think before you react. A lot of people aren’t lucky enough to have any choice, they HAVE to either work or stay home depending on their financial situations. Whether or not you are lucky or affluent enough to be able to decide if you want to be at home or at work with your kids, why be so shameful and horrible to women who may be making a different decision, or may be being forced to do something different due to their circumstances? Who are, in short, DIFFERENT FROM YOU. Why as women do we continue to do this to each other? No one in their right mind would advocate that every sick person receive the same treatment, regardless of their condition, and so why advocate that every mother and child be the same, regardless of who they are?
“You’re of childbearing age.” My doctor told me at my last visit, and I physically flinched away from her at the reminder. I don’t know what I will decide or not decide in the future, but right now I just know I want to avoid the whole issue. It’s a bloody mothering battlefield out there, and to me it doesn’t look like anyone is winning anytime soon.
Out Loud Writing 