Some Mommy truths worth remembering

I have already used up more than my share of newsprint about how the debates between "Mudslinging Moms" of the stay-at-home and working variety are largely irrelevant to the majority of the population. (See the Saturday Star if you want to read more.)

But I do want to mention a couple of insights that were worth noting during my long trudge through the mom lit. I discovered this summer that Mommy Wars: Stay-At-Home and Career Moms Face Off On Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families, a collection of essays edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner, falls short of being the ideal beach book. However, there are a couple of pages that still remain folded down, simply because I so heartily relate to the writers, and because they made points I haven't heard much about in all the media mommy chatter.

Getting to Jane Juska's essay on page 308 was like hitting the water station on the last leg of a marathon. I slurped it up and it sustained me for the rest of the journey. In it, Juska reflects on the birth of her son in the '60s and how she had to return to work but was quite happy to. In hindsight however, she says she would have stayed home if she'd had the choice. The reason: her son was one of those babies who needed his mother. He wasn't ready for her to leave, she writes.

Some kids are. Some kids take early separation from their mothers in stride and adapt, more or less quickly, to strange houses and strange cribs and strange ladies asking them if they want to go potty. But some aren't. As as mothers we know which of our kids is which.

So true. But a point so rarely raised. I had both kinds of kids, and I knew which was which. And they are way too important to leave out of the dialogue. For the sake of those children, and the moms who have to head out the door, we need to put our energy in lobbying for solutions that minimize the stress, the patchwork childcare arrangements and the uncertainty, whether it's in the form of more on-site daycares, longer paid leaves for all mothers, or at the very least, qualified reliable caregivers who are properly paid for the important work they do.

Another noteworthy essay comes from writer Lila Leff, who happens not to be a mother but distinguishes herself as one of the many adults in our communities who still provide authentic "mothering" to so many needy children and youth.

Leff soul-searches about whether she can bear to leave the struggling students she has devoted her life to in order to have her own children. And in the process, she hits the nail on the head about the so-called "sequencing" that many mothers do in and out of the full-time workforce. Leff recalls asking her own mother if she considered her time at home with children as wasted years.

"No," she said with complete certainty. "I see is as one of the greatest chapters of my life. But all chapters lead to the next chapter, and there is nothing worse than hanging around in a chapter after it has already ended."

You can apply that to just about anything in life. And no doubt it would resonate with most women of any age and stage.

So now, onto the next chapter for me. I've been hanging around in the one on mommy wars for long enough. At least for this week.

Goodbye Mommy Wars, hello Parenting Politics

Fifteen years ago, when I was at home with a baby and toddler, there was a curious creature in our neighbourhood, much admired for his bravery and frequently commented upon for his rareness. He was a stay-at-home dad.

This daddy did what the rest of us on mat leave or working part-time or at home with our kids did. He spent a lot of hours outside pushing a stroller, trailed by a kid on a tricycle. He packed up sippy cups and sunscreen and passed mornings standing at the bottom of the slide and admonishing two-year-olds not to throw sand. He wiped noses and kissed scraped knees and made grilled cheese and sang silly songs to avert meltdowns in the grocery store.

But there are some things I'm pretty sure he didn't do. Like frequent the moms and tots groups at the local churches. Or show up at the weekly coffee klatches in neighbourhood homes. Or phone up a friend in tears because he was going to lose his mind from the sleep deprivation and the drudgery and being locked in the house for two rounds of chickenpox. Because back then stay-at-home dads were pretty unusual and pretty much on their own.

Thank God - for the men, for the mothers and for the kids - that things have changed. Now you see a lot more dads in the playgrounds, the pediatrician's office, waiting for the school bus and on field trips. Fathers are rolling up their sleeves and doing much more than the traditional Daddy fare of coaching soccer. And coming across a stay-at-home dad is no longer like sighting a peregrine falcon.

But whether things have improved in the way of community support or social acceptance of active fathers is another story. According to Kerry Daly, director of the five-year research project called the Father Involvement Research Alliance (FIRA), not much.

Last week, midway through its mandate, FIRA reported that while dads are more involved with their kids than ever before, they still feel largely isolated, shut out and invisible in their roles. Sound familiar ladies? You can read more about FIRA's findings here.

So why, as the Mommy Wars debate rages on, with a new book on the subject popping up every month, are dads not part of the discussion? Unless it's to blame absentee fathers for kids who get into gangs and violence and other acting-out behaviours.

Why was the childcare debate during the recent federal election framed as a women's issue? Where are the dads and tots groups and the support networks to help dads manage work/family balance and avoid being "daddy-tracked?" Where are the classes to educate and encourage teen dads to get involved with their kids even if they don't live with them or are still in school and aren't employed?

Those are questions that FIRA is starting to answer, by coming up with programs and community services to help fathers across the board, whether they are new dads, immigrants, gay dads, divorced or separated men, aboriginal dads, teen fathers or men who have kids with special needs.

But Daly says they need a vote of confidence from spouses and extended families too. Because even when fathers are the primary caregivers, they frequently don't feel they have centre stage or that they are doing things well enough. When it comes to childrearing, the long history of Mother Knows Best still prevails. Or at the very least, that Daddy should do it Mommy's way.

"I think we’ve deceived ourselves a little bit in talking about parents as if they are fully interchangeable," says Daly. Moms and dads have their own approaches, styles and traditions when it comes to being a parent. And both are important to the whole family.

So, henceforth on this blog, there's no more "Mommy Wars" category. Instead, we will talk about "Parenting Politics." The issues - whether it's childcare or at-home parents - is never just about the moms.

With that in mind, I've also added to the blogroll. The prolific Rebel Dad, who blogs about the personal and political world of stay-at-home fathers, is a must-read for both parents. So is Elizabeth at Half-Changed World, who writes with insight about work, social policy, books and the big picture, but through the lens of parenthood.

Happy reading moms and dads.

No more fighting allowed

The following also appears in the Life Section of today's Toronto Star, as part of a regular monthly column.

During stints as a stay-at-home mother, I dreamed of not living in overdraft and a reason to wear pantyhose. Fifteen-hour days of Robert Munsch and runny noses sometimes made me wonder whether the kids would be better off with a mother who went out to work and came home refreshed.

As a freelancer from home, the fantasies were different. Oh, for a tiny office off the premises, free of Arrowroot crumbs and Duplo pieces, where I wouldn't have to hide to take a business call. At the computer, there was one ear on the kids. At the playground, my mind went to deadlines. Maybe if their mother wasn't frazzled, the kids would be better off.

Working full-time out of the house, there are still occasional fits of delusion, even though there isn't an option. If I were at home, we wouldn't be buried in cat hair and piles of laundry and the fridge wouldn't always be empty, right? If their mother was there more often and less distracted by work, wouldn't the kids be better off?

This grass-is-greener agonizing seems to be part and parcel of modern motherhood.

I can count on three fingers the mothers I've known who didn't seem to torture themselves over their family/work choices - that is, those lucky enough to have a choice, even at a considerable sacrifice.

So you'd think we'd give each other a break. Raising kids is tiring enough so why waste energy judging how everybody else is doing it.

But here we go again. The next batch of books is out stirring the pot and preying on maternal insecurities.

The latest one to employ the tiresome combat analogy is Leslie Morgan Steiner's The Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off On Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. The essays from a range of mothers have been praised for their insight, but the book's title and raison d'etre has fuelled the mommy wars engine.

Then there's The Joys of Much Too Much by Bonnie Fuller, an exhausting ode to living life as a blur so you can squeeze in everything you ever wanted out of family life and a skyrocketing career.

And 40 years after Betty Friedan upended the myths about fulfillment in a newly-waxed floor, celebrating the housewife is all the rage, with books like To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife by Caitlyn Flanagan and Darla Shine's Happy Housewives.

This is the song that never ends. Maybe it's time to hit the pause button.

Even the recent discussion over our floundering national child care plan morphed into a debate that often smacked of righteousness and more judgment over whether one parent should be at home with the kids - rather than the realities of what most Canadian dual-income families need.

If ever there was a military battle of countless grenades launched and no yards gained, the mommy wars is it.

Two moms' organizations south of the border have had enough. Moms Rising and Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights (MOTHERS), have launched a Mother's Day drive this year with a petition that calls to an end to all the mom-on-mom feuding (and yes, they call it a "ceasefire"). They plan to present it to the three major U.S. television networks at a New York media event next Monday.

"Simplistic 'us versus them' rhetoric does not reflect our experience and needs," Moms Rising says on its website. "This isn't a playground and we don't have to choose sides. The Mommy Wars promote ill will where we should be fostering connections."

The mothers' groups say energy would be much better spent on fighting for social programs and policies to support families and caregivers.

They also note that the whole mommy wars phenomenon is outdated. Among other things, it leaves out mothers who have no choice. Fathers arguably face much more workplace discrimination and social isolation when they try to tip the balance from work to family. So how come there are no "Daddy Wars?" (For more insights on at-home dads, don't miss Rebel Dad and Family Man.

There are a couple of other reasons I agree the whole thing is becoming irrelevant. For one thing, most mothers are not easily categorized. Their work/family balance changes as their kids get older and according to their finances. They move in and out of the workforce and work from home.

Another reason is that after awhile, one's interest in engaging in the debate tends to wane. Defensiveness and judgment flourish where there's insecurity. For me, that was as a new mother. But as the kids got older, I got more confident in my choices and far less touchy about the withering looks or scalding comments that occasionally happened my way.

Once you learn to shrug it off and accept that on the bad days it's easy to glorify the choices you didn't make, you can move on.

Now, if only I could stay at home just long enough to get that basement painted and the freezer full of homemade dinners.

This book may drive me to yoga

I picked a bad week to read The Joys of Much Too Much, the breathless new book by Bonnie Fuller. She's the fashion and celebrity magazine editrix, the Canadian girl who made it in the big leagues of New York, mother of four, notorious boss and all round over-achiever who has taken it upon herself to tell us minions how we can have it all too. If we aim high and try our very hardest - like she did.

All I can say is that after 30 pages, I'd had much too much of Bonnie Fuller. Maybe it's deluded to think that someone running Glamour or Cosmo or Us Weekly would be in touch with the real world. But have you ever heard of a mother - never mind one with four kids and a full-time power job - who doesn't hallucinate about a few days of solitude? Not Bonnie though. She'd way rather have a life that's a blur, "not a bore."

"I'm not the kind of person who yearns to go to an ashram for a week," she writes. Whaaat?

No, she writes. "Few 'aha' moments come from sitting in a room gazing at your navel."

Bonnie's themes are pretty much a celebration of dancing as fast as you can. No smelling the flowers for this woman. Do five things in a minute, run from your demons, embrace denial and keep on going, through sickness and fear and setbacks. More, more more!

Help, help, help! is what I say. Perhaps it's because my house is covered in six inches of dust from those guys who are overhauling our collapsing kitchen. Or because I forgot the teacher interview. And I can't find that stack of overdue bills. And I have sadly neglected my poor blog for days upon days. And there are dentist appointments and meetings with bosses and homework to help with and bathrooms to clean. And what I wouldn't give for an hour of exercise. This savage state of mind is not good for me. Or for the people I live with either. I've just about had it with the perpetual pressure on mothers to go full tilt 24/7 just to feel we are good enough.

No Bonnie, right now your "jam-packed, maxed-out, full-to-the-very-top existence" is not my idea of inspiration. You're welcome to it. I'd rather just aim for some serenity. A chance to flop on a couch that doesn't expel a cloud of dust and do nothing with my kids. More idle stretches to look them in the eye and laugh at their silly jokes and let the details of the day dribble out naturally. More time to stare out the window and write bad poetry in my head and scratch the cat behind the ears.

The full life I'm aiming for isn't about never stopping. It's about stopping a lot more and feeling okay with that. It's about sitting still and digesting and reflecting and finding the meaning in the ordinary.

Among the jacket blurbs on The Joys of Much Too Much is one from fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. "Bonnie's book is great," he writes. "She understands the importance of excess."

Good for her. But that doesn't mean the rest of us need to buy into it.

But who says the domestic glass ceiling is shatterproof?

This morning, as I was hammering the towel rack - which fell off the bathroom door approximately five days ago and has since been lying on the floor under a mound of damp towels - I was thinking that Linda Hirshman has a point.

In case you missed it, Hirshman is the professor and writer who shook up the mommy pundits and got the blogosphere buzzing last month with her article in The American Prospect. In it, she said feminism's biggest obstacle is no longer discrimination in the workplace, but the "domestic glass ceiling" that leaves mothers doing the bulk of macaroni making and counter wiping and laundry folding and story time and homework helping, whether they have just arrived breathless through the front door or spent the previous 199 hours with their children.

She also looked down her nose at what she calls "choice feminists" who choose being home with their kids over "flourishing" in the working world where they can at least be free of household serfdom for a few hours.

Hirshman's article started an avalanche of postings and newspaper columns that is still ongoing, the latest of which comes from Patricia Cohen in yesterday's New York Times. If you want to read more, check out this David Brooks article that ran in the New York Times and an interesting post at Half Changed World. There was also lots of action over at the Literary Mama blog (see Nov. 30 and Dec. 1).

I brought up this domestic glass ceiling theory last week with some friends who are working mothers (and hence haven't had time to read it) and have been in this racket awhile (which is to say their kids are teenagers). Their response was the middle-aged equivalent of "Well, duh."

We're tired of nagging and pleading and still rushing home to coats on the floor and counters covered in breakfast guck.

But you know what? From where I sit things are slowly changing, if not at the pace that most of us women would like. Dads have come a long way since I was a kid, when they routinely arrived home post-arsenic hour to find their children fed and bathed and pajama-ed and transformed from wretched squalling demons into yawning little cuddle bunnies.

In my own extended family, where almost all the moms work outside the home, I've seen all of the dads change their share of diapers, wipe their share of noses, take their kids to the doctor and make their share of compromises. A few have taken extended parental leaves and one was the stay-at-home parent for awhile. Do they do 50 per cent of housework? I doubt it. And I haven't had time to measure that scientifically, what with the vigilant up-to-the-minute monitoring required to see how the scale is tipping in my own house. But I do know it's a helluva lot more than their own fathers did.

Do we still have a long way to go? Yes. But real change takes time. Sometimes generations. I live with five males and despite my shrillest efforts, every one of them continues to step over the piles of stuff-in-transit at the bottom of the stairs. Countless times a day. Perhaps it's biology. Perhaps their brains are missing that synapse that sends the message: "Danger. Barricade on bottom step. Hazardous to ankles. Best remove by carrying up."

However, my extremely loud voice has paid off in other ways. I no longer have to ask for the table to be set, the dishwasher to be unloaded, the laundry to be started (don't ask about the folding part though). I don't do garbage or litter boxes or make the Bristol board calendar of events that gets taped to the wall every month. And for all of this I am profoundly grateful. (Even though I mustn't let on, because I really get ticked off at those almost daily "what's for dinner?" phone calls).

The point is it's happening in many homes, if more slowly than some of us would like. Is it happening in yours?

But I do think we need women like Hirshman to stand up every now and then and rattle the chains. Just to get our blood stirring and remind us there are still battles to fight and we need to be vigilant. Just to get us talking and thinking and debating ways to make it more equitable for our own kids and to keep demanding more support from society (where's our national childcare?) as we muddle through the high-maintenance years.

And one more thing Linda. A lot of us are okay with "choice feminism."

It was exactly sixteen years ago that I was poring over the household budget and gnashing my teeth and agonizing over the thought of leaving my infant son to return to a demanding job. I decided to give staying at home a go, but never stopped feeling I needed to apologize for it. Some of my working friends were shocked. I dropped off the Rolodexes. And on the rare occasions we were at parties or dinners, saying I was at home with the baby "for now" was a conversation stopper. I could hardly wait to get my first freelance gig so I could trade in the "stay-at-home" title for "working-from-home mom."

Like most two-parent families with one parent at home, it was a trade-off. No holidays. No dinners out. Rarely a babysitter. Mommy and the kids did not hang out in Starbucks or go to indoor playgrounds. We frequented the library, not the bookstore. We were lucky to have the choice. But the point is, it was a choice, not an abdication.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I know you will, but from what I can see today, many mothers who decide to stay home for awhile or work from home part-time seem more confident and less defensive about their choices. Maybe it's because the tele-work thing is so much more prevalent, thanks to technology. Or maybe you new mothers are putting a braver face on things.

But if "choice feminism" is the reason, I'm all for it.