In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

The Mommy Diaries

Jill

What happens when New York City women go online and create their own mommy-centered community? A lot of rage, frustration and class warfare.

My feelings echo Rebecca Traister’s:

There is so much to say about Emily Nussbaum’s New York magazine story about the message boards at Urban Baby. So much, in fact, that I can’t bring myself to even start here — at least not until I’ve had several stiff drinks and a few days to consider what I’ve just read.

Check out the article anyway. I’m not entirely sure where to start, but I will say that, although the Urban Baby online community sounds like it can get pretty toxic, I think it’s always a good thing when women can release their honest feelings, even if those feelings are likely to be represented as ugly or selfish or self-pitying. I think a little bitchiness can be a nice anecdote to mainstream baby sites, which are all powder blue and pink and ready to wish good-luck “babydust” on women who are trying to conceive. And I think that allowing women space to be both mothers and human beings — human beings who are sometimes selfish, mean, bitter, angry and unhappy — puts a little dent in the cult of motherhood which insists that having a baby is the end-all be-all of female existence, and there’s something unnatural about you if it doesn’t satisfy all of your wildest dreams.

The guilting of other women sucks. The personal stories are just depressing. And the Urban Baby website makes Manhattan motherhood sound relatively miserable. But I’ll take an honest space over a sugar-coated one any day.

Thoughts?

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42 thoughts on The Mommy Diaries

  1. “Motherguilt”. A fabulous book by Diane Eyer. I encourage every one of these women to read it.

  2. I read Get to Work in one sitting last night. I see why it makes a lot of people angry. There is not good response to many of Linda’s arguments, so people can’t defend their lives. I.e. if you are staying home because your income barely covers the nanny, isn’t that in part because of the tax code (which means the woman’s income – often lower – is taxed at the husband’s higher bracket), you were not discouraged from majoring in art, which unless you are Picasso does not pay much, and your husband would NEVER consider staynig home himself. Ok – are you sure it was a free CHOICE? Not so much.

  3. This sounds like the yuppie NYC version of Mothering.com, an attachment parenting site that gets VERY snarky simply because some people are more “militant” attachment parenting than others. Women on Mothering make each other cry regularly, although it’s calmed down since they changed the rules for the Politics and War board.

    I haven’t met many people in real life who are as snarky, as extremist, or as vocal as the ones I meet online. Maybe because online we are safe behind our computer screens, so we get more brutal.

  4. Picasso does not pay much, and your husband would NEVER consider staynig home himself. Ok – are you sure it was a free CHOICE? Not so much.

    As I’ve said before, in many cases the “choice” comes down to stuff like this. Do I want to pay through the nose for day care, or stay home. Do I want to leave a very young infant in day care, or stay home. Etc.

    Example–I just started a new job, where FMLA won’t kick in till a year from now. If I get pregnant and give birth before that 1-year mark, I get 2 choices–six weeks disability, or quit.

    Why doesn’t Hirshman get that the answer to the problem is not to spend less time with our babies and assume they’ll “do fine,” but to establish a more family-friendly workforce?

  5. Why doesn’t Hirshman get that the answer to the problem is not to spend less time with our babies and assume they’ll “do fine,” but to establish a more family-friendly workforce?

    I confess to having only skimmed Hirshman, but I read her as saying that if we spend less time with our babies and it becomes apparent that they aren’t doing fine, the family-friendly workforce will be forced into being. (grotesque oversimplification, but)

  6. Why doesn’t Hirshman get that the answer to the problem is not to spend less time with our babies and assume they’ll “do fine,” but to establish a more family-friendly workforce?

    But we’ll never get a more family-friendly workforce until there are enough women in the workforce and particularly in higher-level positions of power. Not that no men care about these kinds of issues, but face it, women are the ones who are forced to think more about issues related to raising children.

    I will admit that I had an initial negative reaction to Hirshman. I called her “elitist” in a comment here once. But I was wrong, and I missed her obvious overriding point that in order to make true feminist progress, more women who do have the choice to work or stay home will have to choose to work, even if that appears to be the more difficult choice, financially or otherwise. This will benefit women who have less of a choice or no real choice at all.

  7. What’s really got under people’s skin about Hirshman is that she says the REAL problem is equity in household and child care responsibilties. Why should companies have to give WOMEN a break? Because we allow child care to become the WOMAN’S

  8. OOPS – problem. If it became an issue of both men and women having to either cut back their hours, hire an unaffordable nanny or have a work friendly environment, and everyone were demanding it, you better believe things would change. But it all starts at home. Hirshman says women HAVE TO quit doing 70% of the housework (even while working full time), and to everyone who has ever tried to get their husband to change a diaper during a football game while she is on the phone to his mother AND trying to cook dinner at the same time, it ain’t going to be easy, ladies. But once everyone is helping equally, it gets a whole lot easier to work that job and deal with the rest of your life. Then, you don’t even have to be as forceful in what you are demanding that the workplace provide; hubby already solved a whopping 20% of the problem.

  9. Traister seems completely oblivious to the article’s misogyny and prurience. Maybe like the author she also enjoys digging around in other women’s lives and holding up what she finds for the rest of us to ooh and aah over. She certainly doesn’t seem to object to it.

  10. Marian, nowhere in Hirshman does she say spend less time with your kids. She is all for a family friendly workforce. However, she is saying that’s not going to help you if your husband thinks that going to every parent teacher conference, helping with homework, dong the grocery shopping, dusting the house is PRIMARILY the wife’s problem; cause no employer is gong to let you work 5 hours a week to pick up the 20% slack of what he’s not doing. Women do 47 hours week of housework. If men are only doing 70% as much, then they owe you at least 14 more hours. THAT’S ALMOST 2 FULL WORKING DAYS. Hey, I suddenly went from part time to full time, just like that! Whooho.

    Her larger point is if women keep getting $100,000 degrees and then opting out entirely, eventually educational and mentoring opportunities for women will dry up. Then you will be home not because you made ANY kind of choice, but because you can’t get scholarships, loans, grants, or even a spot in college or graduate school. Serious folk like Richard Posner are already asking why the hell we are graduating so many women from law school when so few of them are practicing.

    Finally, and this is where people get really uncomfortable, if you go hide in your McMansion watching Baby Einstien videos, does it do any good if your child dies of a disease you could have cured by sticking with that research job, or opposing stem cell bans? Or if Iran nukes us because women aren’t engaged in foreign policy on a high level any more, bringing maternal instinct to bear on world security? Or what if your daughter dies in a botched illegal abortion one day. Educated women cannot disengage from society en masse and expect the world to look like someplace you would want to raise a child. Judgmental? You bet she is.

  11. I know that the human condition runs the gamut from extreme joy to irrepressable sadness with both peaceful and painful monotony in the middle….but, after reading the New York magazine article I sort of wonder why these adults (men and women) had children in the first place? And, why, are they in relationships with people that make them unhappy?

    There is so much pressure to couple up and have kids….against some peoples’ better judgement (it seems.)

  12. Alby, there is nothing more difficult than reconciling your commitment to yourself, the world, and those dependent on you. Those who want to avoid the painful struggle give up one or more of those things, and then endure the even greater pain of not being a full human.

  13. BMC–thanks for clearing that up. Maybe I’ve only been reading conservative-leaning summaries of her work. I haven’t read her actual book, perhaps I should.

  14. Alby, there is nothing more difficult than reconciling your commitment to yourself, the world, and those dependent on you. Those who want to avoid the painful struggle give up one or more of those things, and then endure the even greater pain of not being a full human.

    I don’t think that is true. Who is to say that any one individual’s experience is “less human” than the next? I’m not saying people should drop out, nor am I saying that it is easy to raise children with an unsupportive partner…what I am saying is:

    There is so much pressure to couple up and have kids….

  15. Any parent who actually cares, who actually does the hard work to raise a child, goes through times of bleak despair. Child-rearing is phenomenally difficult, especially early on, when babies are able to give back very little, and sleep comes in brief spurts if at all. This is true of fathers and mothers, but mothers get it worse–because mothers are not supposed to ever, ever, have a problem with their children. They are supposed to love them and hug them and call them shmoopykins and be possessed with infinite patience and calm, despite the fact that they’ve just gone through a nine-month endurance test as tough as anything humans face, and that their hormones have been as stable as George W. Bush at the G-8 summit.

    This is, to put it nicely, insane. The world needs places for women (and men, for that matter) to be honest about parenthood–the good and the bad. And there’s a lot of bad. There’s a lot of good, too, and being able to accept the bad for what it is allows you to move on and get through it.

    I’ve no time for parents who don’t take their responsibilities seriously. But that doesn’t describe the women in this article; they do care, to the point that it’s breaking them. For these women, opprobriation is not deserved–support is. Even if that support is just a blank screen that they can anonymously pour their rage and sadness and despair and terror into, letting it dissolve into the ether, so they can get up from the computer, straighten up, and get back to work.

  16. …but, after reading the New York magazine article I sort of wonder why these adults (men and women) had children in the first place? And, why, are they in relationships with people that make them unhappy?

    People are a bundle of contradictions; very few of us get through life without making major mistakes, and very few of us are aware of the internal contradictions we ignore. I love my daughter; however, the stress of being a new father undoubtedly started me on a slide into acute depression, which led to me getting fired from a job, which led to me lying about getting fired, which ultimately led to my divorce. So would I have been better off not having a child? In a sense, yes–my depression would not have spiked when it did. I may have gotten more stable if I had a child later.

    Or maybe not; maybe I was always going to crater, and it was just a question of what pushed me over the edge.

    Or maybe so, maybe I should never have had a kid at all.

    Or maybe not, maybe going through my depression, my divorce, and all the Hell of that was the price I had to pay to get myself into counseling and onto the right medications, and the sooner I did that the better.

    Or maybe it was a choice–child or marriage. I could have one, but not both. Would I give up my daughter for my marriage? No, I wouldn’t–so maybe I made the right choice after all.

    My point is that these people may have married the right person but hit a bad patch; they may want children but be under tremendous burdens; they maybe shouldn’t have had children, but didn’t realize that until they were here, and what do you do then?

    It’s easy to question others’ decisions–incredibly easy. It’s a lot harder to deal with questions about your own.

  17. Alby, I was responding to the first part of your comment as to how people got themselves in such a mess. Well, just like Jeff, they wanted a job, a kid, a marriage, and had their own needs – all normal things – and then the balance of them got out of whack. WAY out of whack, which caused the whole cookie (or big chunks) to crumble.

    I don’t disagree with you about people having quite the strict life script, in which child bearing is Act II, Scene III, and you better play it or risk getting booed off the stage. However, I stand by my original statment, which is that you can’t ingore either the world, yourself, or your family and have the center hold on any of it. (A tensy caveat – there are some people like Mother Theresa who are suited for and chose to ‘mother’ humankind – which becomes in essence their family – not really the path most of us choose). Problem is, these three things contradict in terms of the damands on time and metal energy, so it is never easy.

    Jeff, don’t know your whole story, but I can understand why someone would lie about getting fired. My dad was downsized, and he never lied about it, but it was devestating. It’s hard to act rationally under that kind of stress. I’d like to think that your marriage had some other flaws and that it’s perhaps not fair to lay the entire blame at the feet of your untruth. My second marriage is MUCH BETTER and may I venture to hope the same for you some day?

  18. I think it’s good these women have an outlet, some place where they can ask questions and speak openly. Of course, a lot of their honesty makes me not want children…

  19. “they maybe shouldn’t have had children, but didn’t realize that until they were here, and what do you do then?”

    I’m sorry to hijack, but I think this is an incredibly compelling question, and one that more people face than will ever admit it. It’s certainly one of my bigger fears about having kids.

    I guess maybe posting on UrbanBaby is one of those things you do then.

  20. I have a message board that I belong to, it’a a parenting message board. There’s a mix of working moms, stay at home moms, single moms, married moms and a few dads. We talk very honestly and it’s great… it’s nice to have someplace where it’s not all sunshine and light all the time, where you can vent because you just took your two year old to the bathroom for the 18th time in 20 minutes and had her not do anything. It’s a great outlet and the space I know I can go and find support no matter what. I wish more parents had an outlet like it.
    Along the lines of Hirshman, I do understand what she’s saying and I agree to an extent, but at the same time it’s harder in real life. For instance, my son was born a couple weeks ago… in four weeks, I will still be breastfeeding, which means getting up a couple times a night. Then I get to get up early, get my son and daughter ready for day care (my husband works early mornings, so he wouldn’t be there to help), run them to day care where I have to worry about who is taking care of my practically newborn child, go to work where I get to spend both of my 15 minute breaks and my lunch break pumping milk in my office. Get out at 4:30, come home to the kids and the husband where we will take turns taking care of the kids and doing things around the house (my husband is fantastic with housework and childcare, he would absolutely change a diaper during a nascar race he’s trying to watch and I wouldn’t even have to ask… I even get compliments from female relatives about how amazing it is to see a man who doesn’t have to be nagged to take care of his children) collapse into bed exhausted around 10 and then do the whole thing over again, only to get a paycheck at the end of the week that barely covers my daycare costs. This sounds to me like a prescription for stress and post partum depression, which is what happened when I went back to work 6 weeks after my daughter was born… I collapsed into a sobbing heap in my office and ended up having to take more time off of work and go on anti-depressants. I understand what I’m giving up by staying home and I have a hard time seeing how me pushing myself into exhaustion and PPD again helps advance any feminist cause. Now, once my daughter was a few months old, we switched to formula, she started sleeping through the night and my life became 8 million times easier. Work wasn’t a big deal anymore and I was able to excel in a new position at my company (I had stepped down to perdiem until a more family friendly position opened). The fact is that even if I had a fabulous, well paying job that I loved, I would still need a few months to get my bearings, it’s HARD going back to work after just 6 weeks. I personally loved working part time when Belle was little, and if I could find a part time job this time I would do it in a heartbeat. We have also thought of having my husband stay home with the kids, but I have to find a job that’s a little higher paying first and I need to not be breastfeeding by that point… last night I was up until 2:30, up again at 3:30, then again at 5 and again at 7. There’s no way I’m doing that and then trying to work full time if I don’t have to.

  21. There is a general insanity on the subject of kids that causes people to have them. It’s the only reasonable explanation.

  22. That article was amazing. And frustrating. I can’t sum up my feelings except to say that it’s stunning that all those pressures my mother felt when she had me are still with us, all these years after the evil feminists showed up and ruined the party. There’s a group called Moms Rising that’s dedicated to promoting the causes of woment and mothers everywhere that I’ve read about: hopefully the family-friendly workplace will become a reality. I just have this sinking feeling that lower-income, less-educated women will, as always, be left behind.

  23. Agreed Ledasmom. I can’t think of a better explanation.
    I think a more family friendly as well as individual friendly workplace could benefit everyone. It would be nice to see parents and non-parents working together for less crazy hours, easier access to time-off, paid short term leave, etc in addition to parents banding together for family friendly benefits, like on site daycare (which would make it easier for me to work, definately) or a private area where mothers could pump breastmilk if needed.

  24. Six weeks? SIX WEEKS? Fuck me. In Canada it’s currently 52 weeks (most of which can be taken by either parent, although it’s usually the mother). Aren’t you still healing up physically from childbirth at six weeks?

  25. Hishman is really being mischaracterized in the following way. Her book is targeted at highly educated professionals who “opt-out” – like stay out of the work force for ten years or forever and never really use their degrees again. NOT women who are dealing with the physical issues associated with recovering from breastfeeding and trying to get a baby to sleep through the night. THAT is the kind of stuff the governement could definitely help with, at least by forcing long term care policies to cover a 52 week or similar leave.

  26. Six weeks? SIX WEEKS? Fuck me. In Canada it’s currently 52 weeks (most of which can be taken by either parent, although it’s usually the mother). Aren’t you still healing up physically from childbirth at six weeks?

    Yep. It’s lovely, and makes me mad too, although I’m glad that the company I’m joining grants 16 weeks, plus a few weeks of disability before the birth. That might be NY State, which has fairly liberal family policies. (They don’t, however, have on-site daycare, but their RedState Southern offices do–go figure!!!)

    Hishman is really being mischaracterized in the following way. Her book is targeted at highly educated professionals who “opt-out” – like stay out of the work force for ten years or forever and never really use their degrees again.

    In that case, isn’t she sort of complaining about a fairly small minority? Most SAHM’s I know plan to go back to work as soon as the kid hits first grade if not kindergarten, not permanently. That’s why it baffles me when people talk about the “opt out” revolution–how many people actually do that anyway? Is it a rich people thing I’m not aware of??

  27. Marian, I urge you to find and read Hirshman’s article. She explains exactly why she looks only at elite women with expensive educations, and it makes perfect sense. She’s looking at “choice feminism,” after all, and you can only really examine whether staying home is a choice when you have the full range of choices available.

  28. Marian, as a woman lawyer I will say an inordinate number of my male colleages seem to have college educated, non-working for a LONG TIME wives. Maybe in that sense it is a ‘rich people’ thing. It really helps the men’s careers because they can work as late as they want and go out of town without thinking about child care. Some of these women appear to be enjoying the country club life style, but one I know caught hubby cheating and dumped him. She got 6 months of rehabilitative alimony, but had not worked in 20 years. She told the court she did not think she should have ot work after having been married to a lawyer for so long. Unfourtnately for her, that’s not how stuff works any more. What she did is a big bet she ultimately lost, and that a lot of other women lose. She could have taken 10 years off even, started back into the work force and been in much better shape to support herself.

  29. Zuzu, once I actually read the entire book, I realized that what people were saying about her was really unfair. However, the criticism extends deep. It was discussed like crazy at a recent fourth of July party mostly attended by women who went to my all-womens college (the kind where we chant better dead than co-ed at graduation) and their spouses. The SAHM’s were super defensive and the rest of us kept our mouths shut.

  30. I understand. I actually have a 19-year-old cousin-in-law who just got married (he’s 27), and originally planned to just finish college and then never work, because he makes a lot of money. That got a lot of us worried, esp. because she has never worked a day in her life (lived with Mom and Dad, and now hubby pays her tuition and the bills). The family must have talked her out of that though, because last I talked to them she actually picked a major and is thinking of becoming a therapist. We’ll see if it happens!!

  31. Marian, tell your cousin about my granmother, widowed at 25 with two kids. The kids were raised by a combination of illiterate and underpaid women of color (welcome to the 50’s deep south) and relatives so she could finish her education and support them. Even if her husband has a million dollar life insurance policy, if he dies when she is 30 and then she lives to 90, that is only 16,000 per year unless that money is put at risk in some kind of investment, which she will need to manage very carefully. The stats on how few women actually NEVER work for wages are staggering – it’s very few. So if you are going to have to hit the bricks, how do you want the salt mine to look and how much do you want to get paid to go there every single day? That’s why Linda Hirshman says it’s not a valid “choice” to opt out of the work force entirely, even for elite women. You will never know whether you will be forced back in until it is too late. You owe it to your children to make sure they are not being supported by a waitress or clerk who has to work 2 jobs to make it. Plus if her husband turns into a total and complete jerk one day like mine did, it’s a lot easier to tell him to shove it when you know you aren’t going to have to start living out of your car (but you don’t have to tell her that part in front of her husband).

  32. Why did these adults have children in the first place? Bc they were heterosexaul and like to have sex and no matter how hard you try, the only form of birth control which is 100% effective is complete abstinence. Sometimes kids are a choice, sometimes they aren’t.

  33. FB, maybe they had kids because our society perpetuates this cult of parenthood where only the good and rarely the bad are ever overtly discussed, expect now on these websites where know one knows who you are. You can’t divorce your kids, so people who are not happy about parenthood don’t have many options once it is a reality. You notice what happened to the cult of marriage once divorce became easier (though 80% of divorced people remarry, so most people appear to still think it is ok).

  34. BMC you make excellent points. The cousin actually should know much better anyway. Having been raised in India, she had grandmothers and great-aunts who were married off at her age and promptly widowed/abandoned while still in their 20’s. Maybe that’s how the relatives were able to smack some sense into her and encourage her to get a degree she can use! 🙂

  35. When I was in 3rd grade, my mother made a creditable threat to leave my dad if he did not quit being so impatient with us over, well, everything. He was hell on wheels to live with. If she had not been employed in a good paying job, it would not have been a creditable threat. Forty years later, they are still together because my dad got better; he knew he had to. Make sure your husband knows he has to, and tell cousin in law. This is the real reason the fundies hate women working and divorce. It makes people who don’t want to treat their wives better.

  36. I agree 100% bmc. I have a college degree even though I always wanted to stay home (even though that obviously didn’t happen when my daughter was born) until my kids were in school for that very reason. My dad treats my mom like absolute shit and she’s too afraid to keave him because she has no way to support herself or my sisters. I swore I would never put myself in that position. In addition to which, in case of my husband’s death or unexpected unemployment, I wanted options. I really enjoyed college though, I love learning and taking classes.
    I actually think I need to read the book as well, because I definately see 10 years of “opting out” as a lot different than staying home for awhile due to physical issues or even a couple years because you want to be the one to take care of your very young children (I’ll admit to paranoia about leaving my young children with people other than family).

  37. it’s HARD going back to work after just 6 weeks

    Amen! I went back to work when both my boys were infants and at 6 weeks you just don’t have it together yet. You are tired, you are breastfeeding every hour, you don’t feel great. But if you don’t go back, you lose your income. For the first 6 weeks of “maternity leave” (which is really medical disability), I got 2/3 pay in disability income. After that, you switch to unpaid leave IF your company and you meet criteria for FMLA. If that’s not the case you are out of luck and they don’t have to hold your job.

    I worked for a Tyco subsidiary that did federal environmental contracting at the time of my first son’s birth (1997) and because our subsidary had less than 75 people in a certain radius they did not have to adhere to FMLA standards. (I was in Hawaii, at some point the population in a certain radius drops off because you hit OCEAN.) Or at least that’s what I was told by human resources. On my due date. They called me at home to fill me in on that tidbit. I was too busy with other things to ever really look it up but I got my ass back to work.

    The BEST comment I got during my pregnancy was from my female boss (who was a mother). Again, I was working for a federal contractor, not Tyco. A few months before my due date, I sat down with her to discuss when my maternity leave could start, and she told me “I’m not sure we can schedule that in during that time… “. I’m not kidding. Talk about stress that she was gonna give away my job while I was out!

  38. For the first 6 weeks of “maternity leave” (which is really medical disability), I got 2/3 pay in disability income. After that, you switch to unpaid leave IF your company and you meet criteria for FMLA. If that’s not the case you are out of luck and they don’t have to hold your job.

    Yep. That’s why we put our TTC (trying to conceive) plans on hold for a couple more months since I just started a new job. I want to have the option of qualifying for FMLA, because the company actually grants 16 weeks if you qualify!! I don’t want to wait too long to try, but on the off chance we’re lucky on the first month, I’ll at least get the 6 weeks disability before switching to FMLA.

    I think my company (or NY State) is pretty generous though, because most people don’t have this option.

    Sad though how in the US, it feels like our bosses, not us, get to decide when we begin our families.

  39. And the few screwdrivers I’ve had tonight are making me say…dammit Jill, you ARE converting me!! (re: your facebook comment) 🙂

  40. And the few screwdrivers I’ve had tonight are making me say…dammit Jill, you ARE converting me!! (re: your facebook comment) 🙂

    Hahaha… I knew I’d get to you someday…

  41. Wanna know something funnier? My ex-treasurer-of-Young-Americans-for-Freedom hubby agrees with all this too!! 🙂

  42. It’s stories like Marian’s and Kat’s that make Hershman say that in the current environment, you may want to consider only having one child. How many recurrences of this crap could a man’s career take before he was pushng a broom in the back room? Not many. It’s not fair, and it’s not good, but it is just reality that motherhood and earning a good income don’t mix that well because of non-support often in both the home and the workplace (husband won’t help with night feeding, boss won’t allow reasonable leave). Problem is, women have to eat, often after divorce, death or their husband’s downsizing, all of which is not in their control. When you give up the means to make the best living you can by opting out, you really put the eating part in potential jeopardy. To rip a line from Passages, it’s ok to be dependent on someone else, but be aware that someone else’s self interest must always lie in taking care of you.

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