Hobson's Choice
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gender division -- autumn arrives
So...
the first day of our gendered division of labor, and it makes me feel slightly queasy. Not so much about what I'm doing or my own vision of what I'm doing at least. Taking care of Eleanor is as challenging and stimulating as anything I've ever been paid to do, and strikingly similar to some of my past employment (the question does arise: at what point does a new person stop resembling an adult with severe mental illness, and at what point should a mother stop using the same techniques for communicating with a normal toddler and as with schizophrenic forty year old inpatient?)
I worry about Eleanor and what she may come to think of what I'm doing, that she may think that home is all I'm good for or all she's good for. I worry about Chris and the burden of gendered labor on him, probably greater for him since the greater guilt. I worry about other people who know me and see me around and what they may think they know about me.
So I find myself wanting to wear t-shirts with at least some of the following messages.
(1)I think day care is good thing. I think mothers who work are good mothers. I don't think that I'm making "the right choice" or "the best choice." Sometimes I think I'm making the wrong choice, for me, for Eleanor, for Chris.
(2)I think it sucks that I have a choice to make about providing intense one-on-one childcare and that most American women do not.
(3) I am still passionate about my professional field; I worry that I'm not going to pass my licensure exam when I have enough money to take it. When I go out socially, I want people to know that I'm a social worker and a teacher.
(4)I'm sorry, I really hate tools. I like to knit. Nonetheless, I live a fantasy life in which I fix my own car. I adore women who fix their own car.
(5) I'm not a home-schooling fundamentalist or an "attachment parent"; I don't make my own tofu and condemn Mother's Morning Out because it takes my child away from me.
(6)I adore every break I get. I praise the Lord for Mother's Morning Out and the nursery at the Y. Next year, I will start a religion based on thankfulness for preschool.
(7) Next year, I may be working again full-time.
(8) Next year, I may be mothering a small infant again.
(9) I am terrified of both 7 and 8.
(10) Nonetheless, I am not a secret drinker.
(11) Nonetheless, I secretly enjoyed today more than I can say.
(12) Nonetheless, I spent half the day on the phone, working with social workers, working on their computers. I secretly am grateful for adult conversation; I secretly am grateful for being paid for it.
(13) Nonetheless, my husband must pack his own lunch and iron his own clothes.
8:21 p.m. - 2004-08-23
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