To My Husband on Fathers Day

Happy (belated) Fathers Day! We had a great weekend relaxing, laughing, watching basketball and spending time together. I hope Wes felt loved and appreciated on his special day. Wes really is an amazing father. I always knew he would be even in the beginning of our relationship.
A huge thing that makes Wes a great father is that he's a great husband. I don't want to judge anyone else's relationship or parenting arrangement, but I've too often seen husbands that leave the majority of parenting to their wives. Parenting is hard, and everyone needs a break. It hurts my heart to see a tired women wrangling her kids from sun up to sun down while the man essentially does is own thing. And the kids! They feel that alienation from their father. Luckily Wes knows me and knows that I expect nothing less than an egalitarian marriage and parenting arrangement. I may be a stay-at-home mom, but we both realize the importance of parenting together.
The best time of day is when Wes gets home from work. Wes and Seeley are off and playing. He loves that girl so much and she's crazy about him. They wrestle, read, have tea parties, the works. I am the luckiest women in the world to have this man in my life.

Attatchment Parenting, Feminism, and The New York Times

The New York Times is running a series of articles in their "Room for Debate" section about motherhood, feminism and attatchment parenting. The articles are written by a wide range of women, from author Erica Jong to actress and attatchment parenting advocate Mayim Bialik. As a feminist and semi-attatchment parent, I'm happy to read these articles.
There are so many ways to parent and so many variables with each child, mother and father. For example, I personally believe in nursing-on-demand and not crying it out, but I also think some aspects of attatchment parenting ("childwearing" has killed my back and co-sleeping results in a grumpy family) are not for me. I'm also a bit sick of categorizing things as "attatchment parenting". How 'bout we call it parenting? Or "what you/I do"?
The articles also discuss feminism's role in motherhood. I firmly believe that feminism does not need to be, should not be, so completely tied to capitalism (financial independence is obviously a major part of feminism, but it is not all of feminism). It's too easy and lazy to say that stay-at-home moms aren't feminists and working moms are. I'm glad to see smart, diverse women starting a dialogue on these issues.

Mommy Stress

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner.

I've been occasionally having what I call "stress dreams". They always involve forgetting Seeley or not knowing where she is. It's awful! I wake up tense and terrified. And angry. I can't even escape all this responsibility while I sleep? I know I'm not alone in feeling Mommy Stress and I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.
I've just finished re-reading the book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner. She hones in on "The Mess" that so many mothers deal with and are consumed by:

"These problems are really not so trivial, despite the trivializing forms we give them in our minds. They speak to serious issues: if you don't obsessively campaign to get your child into the ideal preschool, there is no adequate daycare in your area; if your toddler doesn't go to Baby Music Class and pre-pre-Olympic tumbling and Mommy and Me, you will go insane because you are at home all the time and your husband works till 8:30 at night...If you don't read every baby book cover to cover, scour the Internet for information, obsess on food labels, and put a cordon sanitaire around your child, you will wallow in ignorance and potentially allow your child to come to harm, since your pediatrician doesn't take phone calls and won't waste your ten minutes of appointment time answering questions. Because you have no family nearby...because you want to do things better than your family did, anyway...because the responsibility for absolutlely everything is on your shoulders, and this responsibility is so overwhelming that you have to shut the awareness of it down...The Mess steps in."

There's such a loss of control when one becomes a mother. I feel fortunate that most of the time I am able to relax, let go and enjoy and care for Seeley in a way that feels right for me. But that feeling of being totally out of control is never far away. And according to Warner, control is a huge issue for American mothers. The control we lack in making decisions about going back to work when affordable, quality childcare is so hard to find, in trying to find some kind of life for yourself and achieve personal and professional goals when staying home, is manifested in the efforts to become perfect mothers. We let motherhood become soul encompassing. This isn't necessarily a bad thing until we stop taking care of ourselves and start pressuring our children to make all the sacrifice "worth it". If you believe your kids are your "life's work" any flaws or disappointments they experience can feel like personal failure.

"By making them [children] the be-all-and-end-all of our lives, by breaking down the boundaries between ourselves and them so thoroughly, by giving them so much power within the family when they're very small, we risk overwhelming them psychologically and ill-preparing them, socially, for the world of other children, and, eventually other adults."

We live in a society where we have to be the very best. No longer is it enough to put a roof over your head and raise generally happy, well adjusted kids. The quest for perfection has been wreaking havoc on American women and is destroying one of the most wonderful roles life offers: motherhood. I sincerely believe in the adage "happy mother, happy baby" and I believe that with support from spouses, family, friends and community there can be a happy medium where you can give your best to your child and yourself.

Good Reads: The Maternal is Political

The Maternal is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change. Edited by Shari Macdonald Strong. Seal Press. 2008

In the 1960s and 70s second wave feminists coined the phrase "the personal is political". They were telling society and women specifically that our personal lives and our political lives cannot be seperated. What happens at home is shaped by and shapes what happens in the world. The idea has lasted and remains today, most notably in the local food movement which encourages us to view purchases as political acts.

Becoming a mother is life-changing. Not only do you see the world through the eyes of your child, your role in society shifts. It doesn't take long as a mother or talking with a mother to realize how political or personal lives are. The wonderful book of essays, The Maternal is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change includes essays from a diverse range of women including Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Kingsolver and Benizir Bhutto. Topics include pay inequality (in 2008, when the book was published, women without children earned 90 cents to a man's dollar, mothers earned 73 cents and single mothers earned 60 cents), healthcare, paid leave and professional barriers to leadership roles. The book also has more emotional stories about mothering with disability, being a step-parent, raising children outside of gender stereotypes and post-partum depression. The reoccuring theme of the book is that mothers need to work together to achieve social change. I couldn't agree more.

When I decided to have a child and later decided to stay home to raise her, I could feel the weight of my choice and my connection to society at large. I could see the lack of affordable, quality childcare and could imagine the difficulty of trying to achieve my professional goals in an 8hr plus workday system not designed for families. For me it wasn't worth it, but boy do I have unending respect for those mothers trying to navigate that world. My choosing not to work for pay doesn't mean I get to ignore my responsiblities to other families and mothers. Regardless of our differing choices and opinions, all mothers want the best for their chlidren. So let's come together through dialogue and books like this to create the world we want for our children.

How To Be A Father

Wes is an amazing father and an amazing husband. Going through major life milestones with him has been amazing, mainly because we've always done things our way. I didn't know there were so many ways to parent and at times it seems a little silly that everything we do seems to fall into a certain school of thought. One of the most important decisions we made when Seeley was born was to co-parent. Our definition of co-parenting simply means equal involvement, equal dedication and equal responsibility. There is no "head of household" in our house. Wes has learned what her different cries mean and how to put her to bed and he changes diapers like a pro! Our decision to have me stay at home while Wes works may seem old fashioned, but Wes will never be one of those men who provide financially for his kids but barely knows them.
We have a relationship as a family unit, but Wes and Seeley have a relationship that is theirs alone. He does things differently than I do and sometimes I have to bite my tongue. But I know everything we're doing is creating a loving foundation for baby girl. She will always know that both of her parents are crazy about her.

My loves.

Happy family.

Seeley, hamming it up as usual!

Defining a "Real Job" (and Why "Feminist Homemaker" is Not An Oxymoron)

We all do it. We meet someone new and cheerfully ask, "So what do you do?" This question seemingly has a lot of answers. "I listen to music, sleep, go for walks, sometimes I cook." But that's not what we mean when we ask the question and we know that's not the response others look for when the tables are turned. No, what do you do to make money? Until recently I had an answer. "I work for the school district in the Indian Education Department." I could breathe easy. I was working; my existence and productive ability had been validated. But that was a year ago.

There are a lot of ways to be productive and contribute to society, however, only pursuits with monetary rewards seem to be of value. Don't get me wrong, money is important and poverty sucks. It's a hell of a lot harder to reach your full potential when you can't afford heat or food. But why don't we recognize (really recognize, not just a pat on the head) the contributions of those outside the paid workforce?

Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes. Left to Write Press. 2010.

When I say "those" I mean stay-at-home partners and homemakers (both male and female). "Homemaking" is experiencing a major resurgence, especially in the Do It Yourself (DIY) movement. Growing and preparing your own food, opting out of work to raise children, making your own clothing and other acts of self-sufficiency have gained notable popularity across the country. Books like Shannon Hayes' Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture (a must read if you're considering leaving the workforce) have wait lists. So when Wes and I decided that we wanted to live off of one income and that I would stay home with the baby, one would think I leapt in with full confidence. Not quite.

As a woman and a feminist I feel a little like I'm selling out. And what pisses me off is that so many other feminists seem to agree. The way a lot of feminists talk about "traditional women's work" reeks of condescension. Don't even get me started on the idea of the "overeducated housewife" (so I'm too smart to change a diaper? My education is worthless unless I use it to make money?) We are spitting in the faces of the women who got us where we are when we say that women who choose to embrace the traditions that have supported families and united women for years are not as empowered as those who work for a paycheck. Something is seriously wrong when I feel invalidated by feminists for doing something traditionally done by women.

When people ask "what I do" I don't know what to say. I stammer and say "well I'm not working right now" or "well, see, with the baby coming..." I know this decision feels absolutely right for both of us but I still feel like I need to convince people that I'm not just leeching off of Wes. It would be too easy for me to suggest that we stop defining ourselves by how we pay the bills. I didn't realize how much I did it until the paychecks stopped coming. What I can say is that I have been thrown into a huge learning curve in restructuring my time and and pursuits; and in this confusion I've learned that we all ultimately know what's best for ourselves no matter how traditional that may be.