So the big debate about what is best seems to be whether working or staying at home benefits or hurts kids and/or women. Quite honestly, I think that it's a moot point. I think that whatever works for you and your family is what is best.
Besides, some times, there aren't any choices. More often than not, families need two incomes (or more) to be able to just survive. Especially here in the Bay Area. If you want to own a home, even a crappy little place in a crappy little area, it's generally about $500K (and we're talking about something that needs help). So Dad is working 40+ a week and so is Mom.
I was reading recently about how the culture of working Moms has this ripple effect. Working Mom hires a nanny who more than likely has a child or her own that will need to be staying with someone. I've seen the nannies that come to our playgym bring their kids on the days their kids aren't in school. It becomes a case of the nanny having to put their child's needs on the shelf while paying attention to their charges.
There has been so much press on the subject of working versus stay at home over the years. I've read about how by not being a working Mom, I'm somehow betraying the strides the generations ahead of me have made to give me the ability to work in white collar positions. Granted, I'm still not making the big bucks a man makes, but hey, I can still put in the 60 hours a week like he can for slightly less ducats. It seems that even if you manage to put in 60 hours a week at your white collar job, if you're a Mom, you're somehow going to take it in the backside because you're perceived as not being able to keep all your attentions on the job. Rarely do you ever hear about a guy having his focus questioned.
For us, being a stay at home Mom was sort of an easy choice. When Husband and I were dating, we had decided that when we decided to become parents, whoever was making the most money would continue to work and the other person would be the stay at home parent. At the time, we were both making good money at jobs that no longer exist. Husband and I both were downsized within a year of each other from the same company. He found a job that paid well before I did. In the years between becoming unemployed, I had jobs that underemployed me. Jobs where they paid me minor ducats but wanted me to put in 60 hours a week at odd hours. Getting a job at the career path I had been on wasn't an option - my position was considered for the most part to be a 'luxury' item for most companies. And I hadn't had the position for very long - a year. The position I had held before that I had put myself in the hands of outsourcing companies who told me that I was grossly underqualified for that job so they couldn't place me in that job (despite the fact that my former boss had vouched for my abilities).
Being a stay at home Mom hasn't been easy for me. I had been working since getting out of college at full time positions. My paychecks hadn't been great at first but at least the money was there for me to pay the bills (occasionally). I was used to having a fat checking account to be able to take care of myself - the basics and perks like an occasional spa treatment or buying some new clothes. Not having a couple of pennies to rub together of my own is difficult to adjust to.
Taking care of Boy isn't easy. He's full of energy and goes, goes, goes. The job is 24/7. I'm exhausted all the time because he doesn't sleep through the night and he definitely doesn't like being alone all night. So I spend part of my nights sleeping with Husband and part of my nights sleeping with Boy. Even when he's playing on his own, he wants me to be no further than a few feet away.
It's not all bon bon eating and soap operas. I'm trying to figure out a way to clean house, make dinner and even try to make something for me to eat for lunch. All while Boy gets annoyed that my time isn't all for him (like now - writing this is taking awhile because Boy wants me to lay with him while he drinks his juice, follow him while he rides his Disney riding toy etc). Even though every pediatrician and psychiatrist and expert says that I shouldn't let Boy watch television, I keep it on less that he's watching the Travel Channel's Samantha Brown in Hawaii but because he's distracted by the Geico ads long enough for me to load the dishwasher or cut up some vegetables for dinner. Some times during his naps, if I'm not too wiped out, I can actually get the bathroom clean. Well, clean-ish.
A working Mom has to contend with a childcare - picking up their child by a certain time every day or being home so that they can relieve the nanny. Then they have to deal with their child who wants all their attention while trying to figure out what to make for dinner (or where to send their spouse to pick up something). Then there is cleaning the house (if they don't have someone to do cleaning services), finding time with the spouse to reconnect and then, as always, the job probably needs a little more attention.
Let others debate who has it harder. Let others pretend they know what is best overall for each family and each child. In the end, no one can understand what is best for each child and each family but the Mommy who is in the situation.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Why can't we all just get along?
I've been a Mom for about 21 months now. Even before I became a Mom, I had some issues with other Mommies. Since becoming a Mom, my wariness about the Mommy World hasn't abated much.
It's a competition. I always thought that while I was working that it was a lot like high school (the guys bragging about the booty they didn't get, the size of their paychecks and the chicks all competiting for the same job du jour that rocked). But the Mommy World is a lot like junior high school. Everyone is trying to be teacher's pet at playgroups and trying to prove they have the cooler clothes (for themselves or the kids).
But there are some competiting Mommies I can actively avoid in my life. Like the privileged ones living five minutes from us.
We live one community away from two very wealthy communities where the CEOs, CFOs, CXOs all seem to live. A few years ago, I remember reading in the San Francisco Chronicle magazine about how the trend in one of the communities was that the wives of these CblankOs who had held positions of importance before dedicating themselves to Home Life (because you know that's how they think about it) were feeling bereft of the thrill of competition or whatever they did before they married. So they found a new way to compete.
By procreating. By having child after child. By filling their McMansions with the sound of children. Little Monet is two? Time to squeeze out another child? They got to look upon their progeny with a sense of pride as they took them off to dressage class because they were able to pop out the most amazing child. They are stay at home Mommies who can be with Monet, Hunter, Azure and Bond unlike those other Mommies who work and leave their kids in daycare.
Let's try not to notice that their five kids all looked mostly to Esperanza, Carmen and Paloma, their Latin American nannies who spent time with them, rather than Mommy who is taking pictures with her Nikon digital SLR to post to the website when they got home.
Last summer, Husband and I had dinner downtown. Afterwards, we took Boy for a walk downtown before having a nice ice cream before heading home for Boy's bath and bed time. We sat at a table near another couple who were having sundaes with a friend and their nearly newborn son. They chatted with us and we with them about how wonderful our offspring were.
Then came the hammer blow.
"So, does your son like daycare?," she asked me.
"We're fortunate enough for me to be a stay at home Mom," I replied.
The horror struck look that I had heard a comedian call the "turd under the nose" look. Uh oh. Land mine!
"Don't you worry that your son is going to be unable to function socially? He won't be having that interaction that he needs to be able to be around others!"
I tried to tell her that I didn't go to preschool and managed to be the belle of kindergarten without a problem but she was bullet training her way through her defense of being a working Mom. She wasn't sure how we in the sticks (she was from The City - San Francisco) did it because it was clearly less expensive to live here compared to life in the Right Neighbourhood in The City but she had to work. Her son was in the best day care that she could find and she knew he was going to be socially well adjusted.
Of course, she also added that he was four months old and fighting his third ear infection. In spite of her assurances that she was doing the right thing and I was clearly doing the wrong thing (she also had to add that I was sending a bad message to Boy about my not going out and being hammer and tongs with the rest of work world), Husband and I felt like she was trying to reassure herself and her husband that she was doing the right thing. That going back to her job to pay for their big Victorian in The City, their Mercedes SUV and 7 series BMW and other accoutrements of rank was the right thing.
It's not the first time I've heard this. It won't be the last. It's only lately that Boy's Gymboree class has stopped being filled primarily with nannies with children and Mommies with children.
I'm not saying that being a stay at home Mom is better than being a working outside of the house Mom. I'll tackle that topic later. But it's as if women can't stop competing. As if there is only one solution to every single thing and they clearly have it.
We have acquaintances who made it abundantly clearly before Boy was born that we had screwed up in a huge way. Fiona came over to our house with her husband Marc a couple of days after we had bought Boy's stroller and car seat (and two months before Boy's birth) for a visit. They were two hours late because they had decided to go buy a new SUV that day (the Right SUV) and budget an hour for the process rather than four. When they arrived, they brought in their six month old son and plopped his baby bucket car seat onto the floor while he snoozed quietly and wanted to see our baby gear.
The bedroom was freshly painted, the IKEA furniture assembled and on the Mondrian like area rug in the room. I'd put on the walls the pictures that had adorned Husband's walls and my walls as children along with pictures we'd bought for Boy's room. We'd parked the stroller in Boy's room and his new car seat was sitting in the back of my SUV (the Wrong SUV so I had learned). We were rather proud of the fact that we had been able to get everything together two months before Boy's birth.
"Wrong stroller, wrong car seat, wrong, wrong, wrong," Fiona pronounced succinctly.
I was stunned. "Excuse me?"
"What if your child falls asleep in the car? A car seat like ours you just unlatch and carry the baby in without disturbing it."
"But it's not comfortable for the baby to sleep in and besides that, I'm not really a fan of the baby bucket. And my friend the cop said that those things don't always latch back on to their base right."
"If they click, it is attached properly," Fiona said with a sniff of authority.
"My friend said that isn't always the case," I said calmly though I was not feeling it.
"What does your friend know? Do they have a child?," she asked.
"Well, she is a cop who is certified in the proper installation of them but she doesn't have a kid," I said.
"If she had a child, she wouldn't say that," Fiona said.
I refrained from telling Fiona about Renee who had her baby bucket car seatfall out of her car when Renee's daughter was two months old. Exhausted from constant feedings, Renee had put the car seat in with the click sounding but it hadn't really latched. When she stopped at Target to pick up some more diapers, she opened the car door and out tumbled the baby bucket with baby inside. Renee was horrified and rushed her daughter to the pediatrician to make sure she hadn't caused brain damage in her first born.
Renee's second child had a Britax convertible car seat much like Boy has.
Don't even get me started about the competition on what kind of birth method or whether or not you're the biological Mother or an adoptive Mother debates I've stumbled upon. Holy shit. And the breast feeding thing is a land mine field that should have an organization to help defuse it before someone gets killed. Oh and God save me from another Mom who treats her child's food allergies as if they needed to be the toddler in the plastic bubble - or at least, we should all refrain from having anything remotely nut like in our systems lest little Golden breath in the fumes of a peanut butter cookie your kid inhaled before you got to the park. Just make sure little Golden doesn't wander over when I'm giving Boy his graham cracker afternoon snack - which means get off your cell phone so that you can Mom Up and take care of your little gluten sensitive angel instead of expecting me, the Mom who doesn't know you from a hole in the wall - to know that Golden can't have wheat, sugar, or anything with peanuts.
Motherhood should be a sorority. It shouldn't be a competition. We're all Mothers whether the child came through our vaginas, a slit in our abs or through someone else's gift. Being a Mother is challenging, frustration, joyful and one of the toughest jobs on the planet. We should be fighting to get the government to subsidize child care for women who have jobs and women who need a couple of hours each week to be able to pull their shit together.
Let's put down all the books that say there is only one way to do something and remember that all the right answers are only good for some children and not all. Just because little Romena was able to go from bottle to sippy cup at 11 months doesn't mean that every single child can do it without a fight. Just because Nemo sleeps from 730pm to 730am without waking up thanks to that $200 an hour sleep therapist doesn't mean that I haven't read all the same advice you got for $200 an hour and it still made not one iota of a difference to Boy.
Let's all agree that being a Mom really takes a village. Let's watch out for each other's children and each other. Let's all agree that being a Mom is the hardest job you'll ever eventually love. Let's all agree that it's a bitch to juggle raising a child and being a human being. Let's all agree that even with the cell phone stowed into the car while you're at the park, you can't always keep up with a speeding toddler so please, try to make sure my kid doesn't do a header down the steep stair case and I'll make sure your toddler doesn't drown while playing in the fountain.
It's a competition. I always thought that while I was working that it was a lot like high school (the guys bragging about the booty they didn't get, the size of their paychecks and the chicks all competiting for the same job du jour that rocked). But the Mommy World is a lot like junior high school. Everyone is trying to be teacher's pet at playgroups and trying to prove they have the cooler clothes (for themselves or the kids).
But there are some competiting Mommies I can actively avoid in my life. Like the privileged ones living five minutes from us.
We live one community away from two very wealthy communities where the CEOs, CFOs, CXOs all seem to live. A few years ago, I remember reading in the San Francisco Chronicle magazine about how the trend in one of the communities was that the wives of these CblankOs who had held positions of importance before dedicating themselves to Home Life (because you know that's how they think about it) were feeling bereft of the thrill of competition or whatever they did before they married. So they found a new way to compete.
By procreating. By having child after child. By filling their McMansions with the sound of children. Little Monet is two? Time to squeeze out another child? They got to look upon their progeny with a sense of pride as they took them off to dressage class because they were able to pop out the most amazing child. They are stay at home Mommies who can be with Monet, Hunter, Azure and Bond unlike those other Mommies who work and leave their kids in daycare.
Let's try not to notice that their five kids all looked mostly to Esperanza, Carmen and Paloma, their Latin American nannies who spent time with them, rather than Mommy who is taking pictures with her Nikon digital SLR to post to the website when they got home.
Last summer, Husband and I had dinner downtown. Afterwards, we took Boy for a walk downtown before having a nice ice cream before heading home for Boy's bath and bed time. We sat at a table near another couple who were having sundaes with a friend and their nearly newborn son. They chatted with us and we with them about how wonderful our offspring were.
Then came the hammer blow.
"So, does your son like daycare?," she asked me.
"We're fortunate enough for me to be a stay at home Mom," I replied.
The horror struck look that I had heard a comedian call the "turd under the nose" look. Uh oh. Land mine!
"Don't you worry that your son is going to be unable to function socially? He won't be having that interaction that he needs to be able to be around others!"
I tried to tell her that I didn't go to preschool and managed to be the belle of kindergarten without a problem but she was bullet training her way through her defense of being a working Mom. She wasn't sure how we in the sticks (she was from The City - San Francisco) did it because it was clearly less expensive to live here compared to life in the Right Neighbourhood in The City but she had to work. Her son was in the best day care that she could find and she knew he was going to be socially well adjusted.
Of course, she also added that he was four months old and fighting his third ear infection. In spite of her assurances that she was doing the right thing and I was clearly doing the wrong thing (she also had to add that I was sending a bad message to Boy about my not going out and being hammer and tongs with the rest of work world), Husband and I felt like she was trying to reassure herself and her husband that she was doing the right thing. That going back to her job to pay for their big Victorian in The City, their Mercedes SUV and 7 series BMW and other accoutrements of rank was the right thing.
It's not the first time I've heard this. It won't be the last. It's only lately that Boy's Gymboree class has stopped being filled primarily with nannies with children and Mommies with children.
I'm not saying that being a stay at home Mom is better than being a working outside of the house Mom. I'll tackle that topic later. But it's as if women can't stop competing. As if there is only one solution to every single thing and they clearly have it.
We have acquaintances who made it abundantly clearly before Boy was born that we had screwed up in a huge way. Fiona came over to our house with her husband Marc a couple of days after we had bought Boy's stroller and car seat (and two months before Boy's birth) for a visit. They were two hours late because they had decided to go buy a new SUV that day (the Right SUV) and budget an hour for the process rather than four. When they arrived, they brought in their six month old son and plopped his baby bucket car seat onto the floor while he snoozed quietly and wanted to see our baby gear.
The bedroom was freshly painted, the IKEA furniture assembled and on the Mondrian like area rug in the room. I'd put on the walls the pictures that had adorned Husband's walls and my walls as children along with pictures we'd bought for Boy's room. We'd parked the stroller in Boy's room and his new car seat was sitting in the back of my SUV (the Wrong SUV so I had learned). We were rather proud of the fact that we had been able to get everything together two months before Boy's birth.
"Wrong stroller, wrong car seat, wrong, wrong, wrong," Fiona pronounced succinctly.
I was stunned. "Excuse me?"
"What if your child falls asleep in the car? A car seat like ours you just unlatch and carry the baby in without disturbing it."
"But it's not comfortable for the baby to sleep in and besides that, I'm not really a fan of the baby bucket. And my friend the cop said that those things don't always latch back on to their base right."
"If they click, it is attached properly," Fiona said with a sniff of authority.
"My friend said that isn't always the case," I said calmly though I was not feeling it.
"What does your friend know? Do they have a child?," she asked.
"Well, she is a cop who is certified in the proper installation of them but she doesn't have a kid," I said.
"If she had a child, she wouldn't say that," Fiona said.
I refrained from telling Fiona about Renee who had her baby bucket car seatfall out of her car when Renee's daughter was two months old. Exhausted from constant feedings, Renee had put the car seat in with the click sounding but it hadn't really latched. When she stopped at Target to pick up some more diapers, she opened the car door and out tumbled the baby bucket with baby inside. Renee was horrified and rushed her daughter to the pediatrician to make sure she hadn't caused brain damage in her first born.
Renee's second child had a Britax convertible car seat much like Boy has.
Don't even get me started about the competition on what kind of birth method or whether or not you're the biological Mother or an adoptive Mother debates I've stumbled upon. Holy shit. And the breast feeding thing is a land mine field that should have an organization to help defuse it before someone gets killed. Oh and God save me from another Mom who treats her child's food allergies as if they needed to be the toddler in the plastic bubble - or at least, we should all refrain from having anything remotely nut like in our systems lest little Golden breath in the fumes of a peanut butter cookie your kid inhaled before you got to the park. Just make sure little Golden doesn't wander over when I'm giving Boy his graham cracker afternoon snack - which means get off your cell phone so that you can Mom Up and take care of your little gluten sensitive angel instead of expecting me, the Mom who doesn't know you from a hole in the wall - to know that Golden can't have wheat, sugar, or anything with peanuts.
Motherhood should be a sorority. It shouldn't be a competition. We're all Mothers whether the child came through our vaginas, a slit in our abs or through someone else's gift. Being a Mother is challenging, frustration, joyful and one of the toughest jobs on the planet. We should be fighting to get the government to subsidize child care for women who have jobs and women who need a couple of hours each week to be able to pull their shit together.
Let's put down all the books that say there is only one way to do something and remember that all the right answers are only good for some children and not all. Just because little Romena was able to go from bottle to sippy cup at 11 months doesn't mean that every single child can do it without a fight. Just because Nemo sleeps from 730pm to 730am without waking up thanks to that $200 an hour sleep therapist doesn't mean that I haven't read all the same advice you got for $200 an hour and it still made not one iota of a difference to Boy.
Let's all agree that being a Mom really takes a village. Let's watch out for each other's children and each other. Let's all agree that being a Mom is the hardest job you'll ever eventually love. Let's all agree that it's a bitch to juggle raising a child and being a human being. Let's all agree that even with the cell phone stowed into the car while you're at the park, you can't always keep up with a speeding toddler so please, try to make sure my kid doesn't do a header down the steep stair case and I'll make sure your toddler doesn't drown while playing in the fountain.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Let me introduce myself
I'm a late to the game Mommy. My husband and I met in our 30s, got married after a couple of years of cohabitation then waited a few years to have fun before deciding to join DNA. Our son, Boy, is nearing the two year mark and is to put it mildly, a hand full of action.
When I got pregnant, I was prepared for the horror stories. Women who would tell me about marathon labours where the Mommy died a horrible brain blow out death or something. But I was shocked at how the horror stories were about how I was already to shit Mom because I had:
A. Wrong stroller, wrong car seat (Britax which a friend who is a cop said is the Cadillac of car seats)
B. Getting a elective C section
C. Actually paying attention to the doctor's warnings on my gestational diabetes rather than just stuffing my face with whatever I wanted
D. Being completely unwilling to find out the gender of our child before he was born
E. Not signing Boy up for the Right Preschool before he was born
It goes on for awhile. You cannot believe the amount of crap you take for just being alive. I thought it would stop when I finally hatched Boy. Oh was I insane
One of my decisions was to avoid Mommy Groups. You know, that world where Mommys get together with their precious spawn to discuss how to deal with the world of babies and toddlers. It's very warm and fuzzy sounding until you meet some of these crazy judgmental women who is quick to tell you how you are doing it all wrong.
Husband, Boy and I went out for ice cream last summer and met another new family. The Mom was quick to tell me that because Boy wasn't in daycare and I wasn't working, I was short changing Boy. Boy would be unable to be socially adept.
Now, Husband and I live in the Bay Area. Husband works in the tech field and makes just enough money for us to have the luxury of me being a stay at home Mom. I couldn't make enough cash to pay for Boy to have good daycare (unless I took a second job) and I'd rather he had a good beginning with his Mommy - like Husband and I had (both our Moms stayed at home for a first years). We rent a nice house in a nice neighbourhood in the hills. (Another discussion people have bombarded us with - why don't we own a home? C'mon, a decent house in a decent neighbourhood starts at $900K around here. We can afford nothing)
My blog will just me finding a place to vent about how incredible it is to be a Mom in modern America. The joys of Working Mom versus Stay At Home Mom. Why driving my SUV doesn't make me a terrorist anymore than your driving your Prius makes you a tree hugging patriot. And such.
When I got pregnant, I was prepared for the horror stories. Women who would tell me about marathon labours where the Mommy died a horrible brain blow out death or something. But I was shocked at how the horror stories were about how I was already to shit Mom because I had:
A. Wrong stroller, wrong car seat (Britax which a friend who is a cop said is the Cadillac of car seats)
B. Getting a elective C section
C. Actually paying attention to the doctor's warnings on my gestational diabetes rather than just stuffing my face with whatever I wanted
D. Being completely unwilling to find out the gender of our child before he was born
E. Not signing Boy up for the Right Preschool before he was born
It goes on for awhile. You cannot believe the amount of crap you take for just being alive. I thought it would stop when I finally hatched Boy. Oh was I insane
One of my decisions was to avoid Mommy Groups. You know, that world where Mommys get together with their precious spawn to discuss how to deal with the world of babies and toddlers. It's very warm and fuzzy sounding until you meet some of these crazy judgmental women who is quick to tell you how you are doing it all wrong.
Husband, Boy and I went out for ice cream last summer and met another new family. The Mom was quick to tell me that because Boy wasn't in daycare and I wasn't working, I was short changing Boy. Boy would be unable to be socially adept.
Now, Husband and I live in the Bay Area. Husband works in the tech field and makes just enough money for us to have the luxury of me being a stay at home Mom. I couldn't make enough cash to pay for Boy to have good daycare (unless I took a second job) and I'd rather he had a good beginning with his Mommy - like Husband and I had (both our Moms stayed at home for a first years). We rent a nice house in a nice neighbourhood in the hills. (Another discussion people have bombarded us with - why don't we own a home? C'mon, a decent house in a decent neighbourhood starts at $900K around here. We can afford nothing)
My blog will just me finding a place to vent about how incredible it is to be a Mom in modern America. The joys of Working Mom versus Stay At Home Mom. Why driving my SUV doesn't make me a terrorist anymore than your driving your Prius makes you a tree hugging patriot. And such.
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