On My Mind

As I wrote last week, I did finally read that article in New York magazine about parenting and happiness. I was curious whether or not it addresses the extraordinary lack of support afforded to parents in the United States. As it turns out, it does, and it doesn't. Author Jennifer Senior cites a study by sociology professor Hans-Peter Kohler, who found that "countries with stronger welfare systems produce more children—and happier parents," but does not explore just how bad we have it here. Remember, only four nations in the world provide no paid leave for new mothers: Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia, and the U.S. Furthermore, as is pointed out in a magnificent post at PhD in Parenting on this and related articles, we're all out here on our own, with no village to help us out. It's no wonder we're all so stressed out.

Also, my initial argument against the quotation I cited earlier still holds. The article distinguishes between in-the-moment happiness and the happiness gleaned from working toward a greater purpose and suggests that in parenting, one may be sacrificing much of the former type of happiness in favor of the latter. OK, maybe; but on the other hand, unhappiness does not inhere to such activities as washing dishes and doing the laundry (both of which I should confess Beckett mostly does around here), or changing diapers (a shared duty), or comforting a sick child (usually my gig), or anything else. One can—and I often do—experience in-the-moment happiness doing any of these things.

However. As Katrina Alcorn found in her "Who clips the nails?" survey, even in homes where both parents do paid work, Mom is still the one doing most of these things. Unhappiness may not inhere in these activities, but they do constitute a burden. No wonder mothers tend to report less happiness than fathers.

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At ...infinitely learning..., a recent post titled "Rekindling My Affair with Books" got me thinking about reading, specifically how I don't do much of it anymore. Poetry, yes; nonfiction, haphazardly; blogs, obviously; but fiction, hardly at all. And it's not just because I don't have the time for fiction, as I once claimed. The very idea of entering a fictional world and sticking with it through the course of a novel actually exhausts me these days. "Human kind / Cannot bear very much reality," writes T. S. Eliot in "Burnt Norton." Probably so, but these days I find myself not wanting to escape reality, but rather seeking to connect to it more deeply. Where else is my life but right here, in this moment?

Routines

As I've written before, the best (only?) way to keep your sanity while taking care of a child (or children) while working at home is to get organized. We're not really organized, but we're getting there. My goal is to have everything that needs to be done captured on a list, on a calendar, or in a routine (a personal variation on David Allen's program for getting things done). For example, my life has improved vastly since I instituted a morning routine for the Critter and me:

• Wake up
• Shower and dress, or, if I'll be going for a run, put on my running clothing
• Change the Critter's diaper
• Make the bed
• Make and eat breakfast
• Wash up the Critter and get him dressed (after breakfast, because he feeds himself oatmeal—messy!)
• Clear off the table and brush my teeth
• Get outside!

Nothing mysterious here, but I've found that if we do everything in the same order every day (with a variation for the two mornings each week when the Critter goes to day care), the rest of the day goes so much more smoothly. And now that we've integrated that routine into our days, I'm working on adding a couple more weekly routines: having a "budget-and-calendar" meeting with Beckett on Sunday evenings and doing our weekly grocery shopping on Thursday afternoons. Why Thursday afternoons? Because we will we receiving our first CSA half-share next Wednesday afternoon, and so for the next twenty weeks I will be planning our weekly menus on Wednesday evenings, based on the contents of our half-share. Next Wednesday I'll also be teaching my first class in a decade. I'm terrified ... but not a little thrilled, too....

The War on Moms

The discussion last night of The War on Moms by Sharon Lerner at Kris Waldherr's Art and Words Gallery was lively and invigorating. And yet ... I returned home in a foul mood. What brought on the bad mood? Was it the news that of more than 170 nations on this planet, only four provide no paid leave for new mothers: Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia, and the good ol' U.S.A.? Was it Lerner's description of the day care center she visited in Florida, where two caregivers looked after 38 toddlers while in another room a sole caregiver looked after 8 infants — all of them reaching their arms toward Lerner, wanting to be held? Was it hearing about the not-atypical response to the book (coming, I imagine, most frequently from folks who haven't actually read it), that having children is a choice, and so if you can't afford one or aren't willing to put up with the resulting difficulties, maybe you shouldn't have one?

To take on that response ... First, in a long-ago post that has stuck with me since I first read it, Bitch Ph.D. posits that not having children is the choice, not the other way around. Her argument is hardly airtight — for one thing, not everyone "fuck[s] someone of the opposite sex," as she puts it. However, it is certainly true that what we'd like to think of as our "choices," even major life decisions, are often hardly solely determined by our personal wishes. Fate, serendipity, luck (good and bad), karma, or whatever you want to call it usually has a hand. Besides, we live in a country where access to affordable birth control is not guaranteed (though Planned Parenthood is going to fight for it) and many teens lack access to real sex ed.

Second, read the story of Devorah Gartner. Does she really deserve to suffer her "difficulties" (or, I'd say, tragedy) simply because she chose to have a child? Shouldn't we have better laws and policies so that no-one risks poverty and overwhelming debt simply because of the need to take care of another person?

Finally, this theme kept coming up last night: it is in our collective interest that children be raised well. Katrina Alcorn writes beautifully on the theme in a recent post at MomsRising.org.

This

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This — holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.

— Marie Howe, from "The Gate"

In the days after the Critter was first born, I felt as though my old life — the one in which nobody wailed day and night for the sustenance of my milk, my warm arms — was like a bird, perched on the ledge just outside our bedroom window. I felt as though a day would come when, if I opened that window, the bird would fly back into our apartment. And then one day I realized: that bird has flown, never never never to come back.

And so I let go of the past (and have since forgotten what it was like), and though I had no desire to wish away the Critter's infancy and toddlerhood, I looked ahead to the future, when he will be in school and I no longer working odd hours and late into the night. And the future seemed so so distant, and I wondered if I would survive to see it.

And then one day, I realized that I had forgotten about both the bird and my dream of the future. The Critter was napping in his room and the apartment silent but for the mysterious clicking of the refrigerator, and there I was, sitting at my desk, to one side the unmade bed and to the other side a plate emptied of all but a few crumbs from my lunch, and I was no longer planning, expecting, or in any way even thinking about being anywhere else.

Though now that it comes to mind, I must say I do like to think about that bird and imagine where it has gone — somewhere far south of here, I hope, where the ocean waters are a clear and saturated blue. Or perhaps north of here, to the mountains ...

Traps

A long time ago, I promised a post on commitment mechanisms. At the time, I was reading Kidding Ourselves, by Rhona Mahony, who applies economics and game theory in an attempt to give women the tools to negotiate for a better deal in their marriages. For six months, I did not write the promised post. I was too busy, and I was too angry.

Why so angry? As it happens, the anger and resentment that I tend to foster against my husband (try try try though I do to let it go) has to do with the two commitment mechanisms that function with the greatest force in our family life: his studio and my working at home. A commitment mechanism, writes Mahony, "is anything that makes it very expensive for you not to do something that you want to do.... That is, it traps you into doing what you want to do." So, we're trapped: he into making art (otherwise we're paying the rent for his studio for no reason) and I into being the primary Critter caregiver.

I want Beckett to make his art. (For one thing, I have no interest in being married to an embittered ex-artist.) But his art-making commits him to hours elsewhere, in addition to the hours he spends at his job, and I want him here. Meanwhile, to what am I committed? Hours on my own with the Critter, during which I marshal us through a routine of diaper changes, meals that end up on the floor, bundling him up for the necessary daily trip outdoors, settling him down for the necessary naps, nursing and then nursing and then nursing ... and then doing most of my work at night, while the Critter sleeps, beginning with a few minutes to work on my own writing before I turn to the job, which usually keeps me up well past the time I should have gone to sleep.

Of course, this way of looking at my life is only one way of looking at my life. Yesterday, while Beckett was away at the studio, I stayed at home and passed most of the day on our bed, cuddling with a lethargic, moderately feverish Critter. I read, he slept, we listened to music, and eventually the honeyed sunlight faded from the bedroom. It is a day I will remember for the rest of my life.

How Do You Do It?

Or, Life as a Work-at-Home Mom

I work while the Critter naps and at night, after he has gone to bed, sometimes until 1:00 or 2:00 or even (two or three times) 3:00 in the morning. By then, the Critter usually has joined Beckett in bed, and so my favorite time of the day is at the end of it, when I creep quietly as I can into the bedroom, lie down, and cuddle in the darkness with my two boys. More weekends than not, I work as much as I do during the rest of the week, though I try to keep at least Saturday evening free for a Netflix video with Beckett on the couch. Between naps and before dinner is the time for grocery shopping, getting and returning library books, Music Together, playdates, and trips to the tot lot, park, or Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I make dinner, keep track of our budget and spending, and try to manage the tides of clutter that wash through the apartment. Beckett washes the dishes, takes out the garbage and recycling, keeps the bathroom and litter box clean, and (usually) does the laundry. I vacuum when I can. Piles of paperwork, bills, and who knows what else drift from my desk to the top of my bureau to the dining table and back again. My to-do list is four pages long.

The sitter comes for a few hours on Tuesdays, and now we have two full days each week at the day care center for the Critter. Friday was his first full day there. I went to the office (my client's) and called the day care center at 2:30, just after nap time. "He's eating well, slept a little, crying some," I was told. I almost cried myself. Why was I at the office? Why was he elsewhere?

The Artist in the Office

Yesterday, a conversation with writer and artist Summer Pierre on the Brian Lehrer show. Her book is The Artist in the Office. Of particular interest was her insight that the office job is not necessarily a soul-sucking affair; it can actually be a source of material.

As for me, I create my art at the office, which is in the bedroom and next to the nursery. I'm working hard at Rule #1. In a photo taken yesterday, the ugly truth.

Today, a little better.

The Critter at the office.

Wild Things

Although these days I'm only dimly aware that people continue to make and release movies, somehow or another I know that a film version of Where the Wild Things Are is now out in theaters. Manohla Dargis's review in the New York Times intrigues me, and I generally admire the work of (director and co-writer) Spike Jonze and (co-writer) Dave Eggers, but I doubt that Beckett and I will be paying the sitter for a night out to go see the adaptation. The visual and verbal poetry of the original are perfect; no other children's book is as pleasurable to read aloud (although the closing cadences of Goodnight Moon come close). I'm not sure that I want anything more than just what Sendak gave us.

I also love the book for its portrayal of the relationship between Max and his mother. I suspect that Max's mother is a wild thing, like her son. After all, she is the first to yell, in an all-caps roar: "WILD THING!" And, like spanking, sending a child to bed without his supper seems to me to be more likely done in anger or desperation than for any other reasons (and certainly not for any good ones). So it comforts me to know that Max nevertheless knows that she loves him "best of all." Because I, too, am a wild thing — or, in contemporary parlance, "spirited" — and there have been days when I have been lonely, exhausted, and under pressure to meet a deadline, and my tamped-down spirit has let out an angry roar at my poor little Critter.

Please please please little fellow, know that I do indeed love you best of all!

I Am Becoming My Mother

A scene from last night ...

Beckett: What are you making for dinner tonight?

Me: Poison.

Commentary

What strikes me about this scene isn't as much the script, lifted word-for-word from my childhood but with me now speaking my mother's line, as much as the violent irritation I feel when asked what I am making for dinner. It is as though Beckett is checking whether or not whatever I have decided we will eat for dinner meets with his approval. He claims that the query is neutral, but. It is as though, and as though is enough to irritate me.

Maybe Mom Was Wrong

As I wrote earlier this week, Rhona Mahony’s book Kidding Ourselves has gotten me thinking about my power to bargain with my artist husband. Mahony argues that women will not achieve economic equality until the cessation of the sexual division of labor, in which fathers tend to be the primary breadwinner in their families and mothers tend to be the primary homemaker and parent. Though Mahony does not argue that every couple should evenly split the “second shift” of unpaid labor—she rather envisions a future in which labor is evenly distributed between men and women across society—she does hope to give women the tools to negotiate for a better deal in their marriages.

According to Mahony, marriage is itself a kind of negotiation, which she defines as “any situation in which two or more people are interdependent, have some perceived conflict, can use strategic behavior, and have room for agreement.” Partners cooperate to create value—money, time, security, and happiness—and also compete to claim that value (which is not to say, by the way, that they don’t also share some of that value). In competing for that value, partners can stick tight or make trade-offs between and among interests, needs, and positions, and one partner tends to have an advantage over the other in this competition. In heterosexual relationships, the partner with the advantage tends to be the man, because the man tends to have the better “BATNA”, or “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. To put it bluntly, men tend to have less to lose by leaving the marriage, which gives them better bargaining power within the marriage.

Before the birth of the Critter, I clearly had the better BATNA than Beckett. Even as a freelancer, I earned more than he did; plus, my potential for earnings are greater, my vocation (unlike his) does not tie me to living in or very near an expensive urban center, and the costs of pursuing my avocation are much lower than his, which include the rent on a studio and the need to purchase expensive paints and other materials. With the birth of the Critter, however, as happens for most women in heterosexual couples upon the birth of a first child, my threat point went much higher. In other words, any threat that I might leave is now much less credible than it might have been before: I am unlikely to leave both Beckett and the Critter, and leaving with the Critter would be way, way, way more difficult than it would be without him. The current economic downturn has also raised my threat point; my income just isn’t what it used to be (whose is?), and for the first time Beckett is bringing home more than I am (though we’ll see where things stand by the end of the year).

Below: The Critter, raising our threat points to new heights, despite having the worst BATNA of all

Despite my newly higher threat point, Beckett is gamely taking on an increasing share in the household work, and often (though hardly always) without my having to make much of a fuss. Maybe my BATNA, and thus my bargaining power, is still relatively good, or at least not that much worse than Beckett’s; maybe he’s just a great guy. But I shouldn’t fool myself. For one thing, by far the majority of the Critter care falls to me—more on that later. And for another thing, we’ve been “dealing with” a good part of the household work by doing it less frequently or not at all, which troubles me (and therefore costs me) a great deal more than it does Beckett.

Analyzing one’s relationship with a beloved spouse in terms of economics and game theory is probably not all that appealing to many (most?) people, but I must confess that I’m taking great pleasure in Mahony’s book and the insight it has given me just to see what changes I want to make and what obstacles might be in the way of making those changes. And anyway, I’m taking the economic analysis of our relationship pretty lightly, because the one thing that gives both Beckett and me a lousy BATNA has nothing to do with either our earning power or the costs of making our art. The truth is, both of us were pretty darn unhappy until we met each other.

Coming soon: commitment mechanisms and Critter care …

The Yellow Light Shining

I sometimes find myself wondering, What if I had not married? What if I had no Critter? My mind then turns to lines from one of Linda Gregg's poems, "Staying After":

Women have houses now, and children.
I live alone in a kind of luxury.
I wake when I feel like it,
read what Rilke wrote to Tsvetaeva.

How I sometimes long for that luxury: a large quiet space for my thoughts, for language, for poetry. While fetching a washcloth for the Critter's face one morning, I marveled at how busy I once thought I was. These days, I am lucky to jot a line or two in my journal, lucky to get to bed before midnight. And far too often my mind is like a puddle and my energy like dead leaves scattered and turning to mud in the puddle. Writes Gregg,

... And even now
I love the yellow light shining
down on the dirty brick wall.

Yes! That's what I want: not to look at the world as though through a muddy puddle, but rather to see the yellow light shining!

But. When I am tempted to wish that my life were otherwise, it is because I have forgotten who I really am. The truth is that in the long years before I met my love, I spent far too many hours wallowing in the muddy puddle of depressed self-pity. And the truth is that I once thought I was busy because I really was too, too busy at a job I did not much like. And the truth is that with or without a large, quiet space for my thoughts &etc., I've actually written my best poetry since shortly after I became pregnant. The yellow light is in fact shining all around me: on the sweaty, napping baby; on the piles of dirty laundry; on the unmade bed.