Feminist Mama
< div>I am a liberated stay-at-home, not some sort of June
Cleaver throwback!
accompanied Aodán’s birth six and a half years ago, one of the most
frightening was becoming dependent on my husband in a way I had never been
before. I wanted to be at home with my baby, but had been used to working and
being a student, getting feedback on the work I was doing, managing my own
money, being appreciated for my intelligence and skills. And all of the sudden
I was doing utterly exhausting work that didn’t feel like any work I’d ever done
before and that I would have been pining for if someone were paying me to be
somewhere else, only they weren’t because we’d just moved to Prague. I wasn’t
really accountable to anyone so long as I kept him clean and fed, which was
strange feeling — I could spend the day making flashcards teaching the baby
ancient Greek and calculus and grinding my own organic babyfood, or I could
spend it passed out in front of the television, and no one would fire me. But
then again, it wasn’t like working harder was going to pay me better. I
actually just spent a lot of time waiting for Raven to come home each day so he
could hear about my latest adventures in grocery shopping… but there was this
vague uneasiness, I wasn’t sure about what I was doing. In many ways it
resembled those first few days living in college dorms before classes began when
nobody was telling me where to be or when to be there. I made jokes about
donning pearls and high heels to vacuum, but spent many days in leggings and
t-shirts unable to get out of our apartment, unable to find the time to shower.
And isolation didn’t make me any more sure of what I was
doing.
I think some of the strange
feeling was this clash between the part of me that knew I was the best person to
be caring for child and the part of me who had spent her life being told how
smart she was and what great things she was going to accomplish. Free to Be
You and Me
had been an anthem, telling me little girls could grow up to be anything they
wanted. I am just not sure that being a mommy counted. And as an intelligent
woman, I was supposed to be out vindicating all the hard-won rights my feminist
forebears had fought for. On the other hand, I had just been introduced to this
idea that perhaps feminism could be defined as believing that every woman, as a
person, gets to express herself fully as the person she is — that she not have
to be one way or another simply because she is female. Surely that applied to
the choice to be with my children if that is what I choose… at least I think
it’s what I choose.
Actually it’s not
that great a choice: surely the work I do, the creativity it requires, the
exhausting hours, the vulnerability and humility and willingness to keep trying
when I realize that I am not at all cut out to be a mother but rather one of
those park rangers who lives in remote corners of national parks watching out
all day for forest fires, surely these shouldn’t leave me with no social
security, a big gap on my resume when I decide to try contributing to the gross
national product officially again, the statistical risk for intense poverty if
Raven should ever decide he’s had enough of me. But on the other hand, if I
were employed, I’m pretty sure most of what I earned would go to paying somebody
to do what I’d want to be doing myself, and a lot of what I have seen of day
care scares me. If my children can drive me, who loves them more than life
itself, a little crazy, imagine the effect they’d have on someone without the
biological imperative to keep showing up for them day after
day!
You don’t have to survey much
mommy culture to realize what a huge divide the stay-at-home vs. working issue
is — and I have friends all over the spectrum. But I think it’s one of those
debates that distracts you from the real issue, about how our society doesn’t
particularly value the work of child-rearing (and the best discussion of this
I’ve ever read is in Anne Crittenden’s The
Price of Motherhood ).
So
if the political is personal, how do I survive being a feminist who is dependent
on her husband? I think using the term “equal” is a bit misleading, because if
you were to look at this mathematically, our jobs, our worths, our needs are
incommensurable, we’re doing different, necessary things and trying to remember
to appreciate the others’ roles. He is an amazing cook and a fun father and my
best friend and if I tried to keep score of who was doing what and who was
getting what I’d waste a lot of energy and be miserable — I just know that I’m
getting better at asking for the time and space and resources I need.
When one of my sons starts worrying
about whether I’m being fair, I usually try to redirect the discussion and
remind him that we all have different needs at different times and that I do my
best to meet his needs and also his brother’s, and that I’d rather spend time
playing than bookkeeping, so he’s just going to have to trust me. I’m not
saying that in the big picture fair isn’t worth fighting for,
but my family is not going to be the battlefield for this fight, when trusting
feels so much better.
It’s strange to go back and read these. A lot of them I read at the time or close to the time you wrote them and I can almost pull up the feelings I had at the time… but not quite. Boy was I in a different place back then.
I love this entry. Especially the last paragraph. I’m going to have to use that line about bookkeeping!
I do not go to male doctors, dentists, financial advisors and pastors who have stay-at-home wives. The only way a man can be fair to a stay-at-home spouse is to eventually become a full-time househusband himself.
I am convinced that economic dependence on a husband is a form of exploitation. Even if the husband is being nice to his economically dependent wife, he is still exploiting her. If he REALLY loves her, he will do anything, absolutely anything, to keep her from being economically dependent.
I hope your husband is refusing pay raises and promotions. It is nauseating to see so many men with stay-at-home wives leading corporations, unions, and government agencies. As long as women keep doing men’s family work for free, the workplace will continue to be anti-family and anti-feminist.