Family – Page 11 – Feministe

Hey, that’s a girl!

My daughter is watching the StompOutLoud DVD, one of her Chanukah presents, and she just noticed that one of the dancers/percussionists in the opening sequence is a girl.

One of the most painful things about having a daughter, for me, is watching her discover the things that women still can’t or don’t do. She’s surprised when she sees a woman on a construction crew, or a woman police officer, or a woman playing drums. She knows there are no women playing major league baseball, and I still remember the conversation we had when she was 4 and asked me if she could grow up to be a Yankee. It’s as if my own childhood recognitions of the narrowing horizons are playing out all over again.

But then I realize the changes: when I was her age, I didn’t know any women who were doctors, or dentists, or accountants, or lawyers, or financial advisers – she’s met women who do all of that. The astronauts were all men. The first Presidential election I remember is Nixon/Humphrey in 1968; the first one she’ll remember is likely this one, with a woman front and center. My daughter has an aunt who’s a vet, and an aunt who’s a physicist, and the physicist’s sister works for NASA – that’s right, she is a rocket scientist.

When I was in second grade, I had to wear skirts to school, and I wasn’t allowed to climb on the monkey bars during recess. My daughter came home recently with a bruise on her forehead. I asked about it, and she said “I got kicked in the head”. Huh? “Well, you know that thing I do where I flip myself over and jump off the highest monkey bar and land on my feet? Turns out Charlie can’t do that”. Hey, that’s my girl!

Out there on our own

I keep hearing about “helicopter parents” – you know, the ones who hover over their kids all the time. Helicopter parents don’t let their kids make independent decisions. They shelter their kids from any responsibility; they go from orchestrating preschool playdates to directing college applications without allowing the kid any increase in independence. My friends who teach in local colleges complain about the phone calls from parents asking for extensions or arguing about grades or protesting the patently unfair treatment that must have led to little Alistair’s recent C-. There’s a general chorus of disapproval at the way today’s kids are coddled.

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Phew

My last post of the weekend – I’m headed upstairs to fold the last batch of laundry and put my feet up for a bit. It’s been a busy few days: we cleaned out and reorganized the kid’s room, pulled everything out of the toy room and threw out even more plastic crap as well as generated another big box for donation, found a great new recipe for yeast-raised waffles, and Sam actually got caught up with the laundry so we can figure out which of our daughter’s socks should get tossed and which have mates. This afternoon I participated in our hospice’s memorial service for patients who died in the last six months. Oh, and we had friends over for dinner on Saturday and dealt with the dog, who appears to now have panic attacks on top of his previously diagnosed anxiety disorder (and yes, we’re working with a vet and a behaviorist and yes, he’s on meds and no, we didn’t get him from a breeder but are now starting to understand why his previous family couldn’t keep him). Plus it snowed here this morning and tonight will bring freezing rain and I haven’t found my gloves.

I’ll be back next weekend for more guest blogging, albeit at a reduced pace because next weekend is the performance day for our daughter’s dance program and our Chanukah party (same day) as well as the weekend we have tickets for a Cirque de Soleil performance with my mother (the next day). So those of you who find yourself in the mod queue next weekend will need to be patient with me!

It’s been a blast so far; thanks to Jill for inviting me and to all of your for being so interesting to hang around with. If anyone’s seen my gloves, let me know.

How did we end up with this much plastic?

We really don’t buy a lot of toys for our daughter. We’re quite restrained, especially in comparison to our cohort of older parents with enough disposable income to buy stuff from those fancy catalogs with wooden toys. You know, the wooden toys kids won’t actually play with.

Our restraint has nothing on my mother’s talent for excess, though. My mother waited a long time for a grandchild and she is determined to make up for the lost years. Plus there are two older cousins who send us what they’re done with. Today we sorted through everything in my daughter’s room (we didn’t get to the closet) and we tossed an alarming amount of stuff into the garbage, which really bothers me, but there wasn’t any choice. Our dish drainer is full of plastic dishes and pots and pans and plastic food, all of which will go with the play kitchen to its next home – the volume is staggering. There’s a huge box of stuff for donation, and my daughter is happily going to sleep in a much tidier and pleasantly re-arranged room.

“It’s my princess room!” she said. “Really? What makes it a princess room?” asked her generally anti-princess mommy. “It’s all neat and clean. Princesses keep their rooms neat and clean. That’s how you know they’re princesses”. We’ve already recognized that our daughter is a naturally neat person who landed in the home of two not-so-naturally neat parents; when she was four, she said “Mommy, why don’t you make your bed every day like I do? It’s so much better”.

Things I didn’t know when I became a parent: that I would end up owning barrels full of primary-colored plastic without ever buying any of it, and that it’s possible for a child to be neater than the adults.

Tomorrow we tackle the toy room, this time without her assistance. Some tasks are too nasty for children.

Why I love my daughter’s dance class

Because they’re having an “informal performance day” next week instead of a recital.

Because there’s no dress rehearsal.

Because the performance costume is a pair of black pants and a black leotard for tap, and the same black leotard and pink tights for ballet.

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He’s such a boy

Saw a new patient yesterday who apologized for bringing her three-year-old son to the appointment with her. He did pretty well; she brought a bunch of toys and a coloring book and a box of snacks, and she told him in advance that he could have the snacks when I came in the room, so he settled down with his crackers while we talked. It’s never a surprise to me when kids start to wiggle or wander around during Mom’s exam. It’s hard to sit still when you’re three. But it does still surprise me when mothers – whether they’re patients or friends – say the kind of thing this woman said to me:

I’m really sorry about him {child is doing nothing unusual, just climbing on and off the chair} My older one, she’s six, and she’s an angel. But he’s all boy.

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Privatizing Marriage

As usual, I am with Stephanie Coontz. If you aren’t familiar with Coontz, get thyself to Amazon, because she is an incredible social historian and feminist commentator. And go read her article. A teaser:

Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples — gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship.

“Men seldom make passes at women who wear glasses”

I’m back! I found an article a few days ago that I felt compelled to write about. Warning: I’m writing this in a state of frenzy as I’ve got about a million disconnected (and connected) thoughts going through my head. So, if I digress…forgive and forget. K? Cool.

So, the LA Times has an article out on the single (and happy!) woman in Egypt. How appropriate. The article is essentially about the burgeoning population of single, career women in Cairo, and their waning desires to get married all young and stuff and start having babies (not that there is anything wrong with that). The article addresses the social pressures (which are present in the States as well, but I think, not as prevalent) of getting married at a young age and foregoing a career in exchange for a stable, dependent husband. As if the two are mutually exclusive.

The whole idea of beauty and intelligence being two mutually exclusive attributes really bothers me. It actually really annoys the hell out of me. I had the unfortunate experience of dating a huge misogynist not too long ago, and he pretty much fit right into Parker’s quote. The reasons he broke up with me? There were a few…let me break them down…(yes, they are that good):

1) I never cooked him dinner. Ever. Whoops. Homeboy wanted me to make him sandwiches and bring them to class for him as well. I’m a bad girlfriend.

2) I “studied more than he did, worked out more than he did, went out more than he did, drank more than he did.” Dating a frat boy probably wasn’t the best idea on my part.

3) when we walked down the street, and I was talking politics or feminism or…anything serious, even for a second…it made him “feel like he was walking down the street with a 45 year old woman” (what?!?)

and

4) he was afraid “I would correct him in front of his friends at the weekly kegger or frat party”

Right. Right. So…homeboy kept on asserting, the entire length of our relationship, that he loved the fact that I was smart and funny and also…”a hottie to boot!” (wow, what a compliment) but that…in social situations, I was never to “one up” him. On anything. Ever. Even if he accidentally mis-used a word. Or made a total ass out of himself. Which he did. Often. Without trying to figure out my deranged mental state while dating this character…the point is…that I always felt like I had to hide my motivation, my intelligence. I had to hide the fact that I was opinionated and…that I was *gasp* a feminist! No! If he only knew I was guest-blogging for a feminist blog RIGHT NOW…I think he might pop a blood vessel.

I’m in no hurry to get married, and while I’m definitely open to the idea of marriage, I don’t feel as inclined towards meeting the man of my dreams and popping out lots of babies. My older sister, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. She’s a 27 year old, Harvard and Johns Hopkins educated pediatrician, and has definitely cried to me on the phone about her plight as the “old maid” who just wants her boyfriend to propose. She’s 27. We’re different, if you couldn’t tell. My parents have pretty much caught on (they are smart!!) that I’m not necessarily jumping up and down about the thought of getting married and I am constantly sending hints to my mother (via emails) trying to telling her that feminism, human rights, women’s rights, all of it…well, it’s not just a hobby.

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Why feminism is good for everybody, part 2954

Divorce rates are the lowest they’ve been since the 1970s, and marriages are more stable.

There are certainly myriad reasons why marriages are stronger now than thirty years ago, but I’d imagine that chief among them are things heavily influenced by feminism. As traditional gender roles expand, women and men have greater choice in who they marry. Men no longer shoulder the burden of being the sole breadwinner, and women are no longer expected to do all of the home and child-care. Women are going to college and grad school in record numbers, and are meeting people with whom they are share genuine interests and goals. People are delaying marriage, and marriages entered into later in life tend to be more stable and longer-lasting. Marriage is increasingly optional, and so more couples enter into it when they want to, instead of getting married so that they can escape social pressure or have children or live together or have sex without guilt. And couples can have sex for pleasure instead of constantly fearing another pregnancy, making marriage very much an institution for the two people who enter into it, and, ideally, fostering families who can choose to have children when they’re ready (which obviously makes for happier parents).

Next step: Making this institution open to everyone.

Screw the rules – The rules didn’t work

Finally, a not-completely-horrible article about women blending work and family. There’s no shaming or guilting of women, which is a welcome step. But there is the usual focus on a narrow slice of woman-dom.

Kelly represents a new generation of American mothers who are rejecting the “superwoman” image from the 1980s as well as the “soccer mom” stereotype of the 1990s. Mothers today are more likely to negotiate flexible schedules at work and demand fuller participation of fathers in child raising than previous generations did, giving them more time to pursue their own careers and interests. Some so-called mompreneurs start their own businesses. Nearly 26 percent of working women with children under 18 work flexible schedules, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with 14 percent in 1991.

“Fifteen to 20 years ago, women in suits and sneakers…were playing by the traditional rules of the game, trying to live in a man’s world. Now women are saying, ‘Screw the rules—the rules didn’t work,'” says Kellyanne Conway, president of the Polling Co., a research firm. Conway, 40, the mother of twins who are almost 3 years old, started her business in 1995, allowing her to set her own hours and occasionally work from home.

The article doesn’t hand-wring over the “impossibility” of having it all, but it does point out that employers remain hostile to change:

Not that it’s always easy. Heidi Leigh, 34, a former theater sales manager and mother of a 1-year-old in South Plainfield, N.J., tried to shift her schedule a half-hour earlier in the day so she could get home in time to pick up her son from day care and make dinner. Her boss said no. “He wouldn’t allow it, because he didn’t want other people to do the same thing,” she says.

“More and more companies are hip to [flexibility], but it’s still not the norm,” cautions Michelle Goodman, author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube.

My major problem with the article is that it comes from a very privileged place — the Average American Woman isn’t a highly-valued employee in a professional office who, if need be, can drop everything and start her own business. Self-employment is great, but most people don’t have the start-up capital to open their own family-friendly bakery.

It’s easy for someone like me to look at these issues with blinders on — after all, I’m entering the legal profession, and these work-life issues are much-discussed aspects of law firm culture. Firms boast about their family leave policies when they recruit new attorneys. There are entire collectives within the American Bar Association focused on strategizing ways to deal with these issues. The “working woman,” in my mind, goes to work wearing a business suit.

But that isn’t reality. The reality is that women dominate the low-wage pink-collar workforce, and “opting out” isn’t an option for lots of these women. For a lot of women, even adequate paid maternity leave is a pipe dream; the right to a flexible schedule in order to be home for dinner is a joke if you’re working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. My own mother was able to balance raising kids with a job she loves by working part-time, and by being married to a full-time breadwinner. Her mother, a single mom raising five kids in the 1950s, worked as a waitress in two restaurants and as a crossing guard — an article like this would be entirely irrelevant to her life.

So I’m glad to see that the most privileged women are making small changes to the traditional work rules. They’re in the best position to do it, and we’re all pretty fucked when it comes to work-life policies, so it’s great that they’re seeing some successes. I just hope that it doesn’t stop with the professional class. And I hope journalists start representing the diverse realities of working women.