What do Sheryl Sandberg and Kate Upton have in common?

A regular chick’s take on Lean In

I am not a career woman. I enjoy my work, I take it seriously and do a good job, but I’m under no delusions. I have a B.A. from a small Liberal Arts university. I’ve never made six-figures. I am working, right now, part time from home. Really, a nobody. And yet, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In had something for me. I like to take lessons from wherever I can find them.

I’ve been enjoying the many reviews and online discussions about the book, and I  understand, even if I don’t necessarily agree with, many of the criticisms. Other, though, seem preemptively dismissive and angry, as this Salon piece notes.

One of the best commentaries I read on Lean In came from Penelope Trunk who observed, “Sheryl Sandberg is such an incredibly aberrant example of women at work…She is great. Smart. Driven. I get it. I am doing a life that she would hate. I thought I was a high performer, but Sheryl Sandberg has no time for people like me. I spent so many years working hard to get to the top, but the truth is that I’m not even close. I was never in the running. I am nothing like Sheryl Sandberg.” Trunk added, “Sheryl Sandberg gives up her kids like movie stars give up food: she wants a great career more than anything else.” Harsh, I know, but I don’t think she meant it in a mean way or meant that Sandberg doesn’t love her kids. She’s just…different.

I always used to think, regarding women who felt bad that they didn’t measure up to models and actresses, that they were out of their minds even thinking they were in the same league with these women to begin with. Women like Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover girl Kate Upton. The complaints about “the media” and women’s body image never quite resonated with me because I had already faced the reality: I am not a super model. Surely, most other women must know this too, shouldn’t they?

I once read a book called The Secrets of Skinny Chicks and found, really, no secrets, but just what one would expect. These women worked out a significant amount of time and they really, really watched what they ate. As one reviewer said “…this book absolutely does not pretend that you can be a Size 6 US without considerable deprivation; we’re talking 1200-1600 calories a day AND a two hour cardio and weights program, ladies. It’s also honest about wishing it could hate food; this is really not the book for anyone with much gusto about mealtime…” I kind of know. Before I had a kid, I worked out, actively, a couple hours a day, plus briskly walked a round trip of four miles to work. I just didn’t have that much else to do at the time. My life is different now and I accept it. You have to put in a certain amount of work to get certain results.

The same goes for careers. When Sheryl Sandberg was at Harvard, I was waitressing, partying, taking classes a couple at a time at community college and otherwise meandering through my twenties. I somehow made it out the other side with a degree and was able to hold decent jobs, but I don’t expect to be the billionaire superstar Sandberg is (by the way, she was also an aerobics instructor at one point). It really wouldn’t be fair. I can still learn from her, though, just like women can learn from the “Skinny Chicks,” super models and Upton, whose trainer describes her daily double sessions and multiple cleanse diets. Sandberg talks about going home for dinner at 5 and having taken a 3-month maternity leave like these were major breakthrough concessions she made for her family. The dedication to her work and the intensity with which she works is extraordinary and more than I’d be willing to put in, just like double workout sessions and super-strict diets are more than I’m willing to do to look a certain way.

As an aside, Upton’s trainer defends her “porkiness,” which, of course, is laughable, except that I can see that as lean and sexy as she is, Upton is fleshier than many other SI and Victoria’s Secret models. She’s somewhat approachable. Just like Sandberg.  In Lean In, her voice is friendly and diplomatic as she nods to caregiving being important and acknowledges “Many people are not interested in acquiring power, not because they lack ambition, but because they are living their lives as they desire. Some of the most important contributions to our world are made by caring for one person at a time…”

Understanding I’m not Sheryl Sandberg or Kate Upton, and not in their league, I can take notes from aspects of their successes I may be interested in achieving for myself to a lesser degree, keeping in mind the reality that I don’t have the will (or genetics or background at this point in my life) to take it to that level. I can still work out regularly and cut out extra junk and be in nice shape. I can speak up in business situations, be confident and lean in, where appropriate for me, and improve my place in the work world.

So with that, I’ll share some of the best points of Lean In that are applicable to women (anyone, really) in most jobs.

If you want or need something, ask for it. It never occurred to Sandberg, or anyone else at Google, that maybe pregnant employees could use parking spots closer to the building—until, that is, she got pregnant. After a mad rush to the office from a far flung spot, naseuous, she marched into Sergey Brin’s office and made her request. The company set up special parking for pregnant employees. Of course, you might get an answer of no, but you won’t know unless you ask.

Sit at the table. Sandberg tells of a Facebook meeting she hosted for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in which women on Geithner’s team hung back not even sitting at the table with the rest of the group—even when personally invited to sit there by Sandberg herself. I mean, really, I’m just a schlub and I know better than that. If there’s seats, take one. If you’re invited, gosh, it’s weird and rude not to take one. But, apparently the inferiority complex is so deeply ingrained into some women that they need extra cajoling.

When you don’t feel confident fake it. Pretty straightforward, read the book for more nuance.

Take initiative. Sandberg says, “The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.” She cited data from Hewlett Packard that men will apply for a position if they meet 60 percent of the requirements and women only apply when they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria needed. “Women need to shift from thinking ‘I’m not ready to do that’ to thinking ‘I want to do that—and I’ll learn by doing it,’” she says.
At my first job out of college I was hired as a Communications Coordinator making 30K. I quickly realized I could easily do what they expected and was always asking for more work. I got sick of asking for more so instead I just started looking for things the organization needed and doing them. I took over the website (it was 1999 and having taken one web design class in college, I knew more than anyone else there at the time). Soon after, I outlined what I had been doing, suggested a title change and raise to 45K and they agreed. That’s my little pond story of initiative. As Sandberg notes, “…opportunities are not well defined but, instead, come from someone jumping in to do something. That something then becomes his job.”

Understand and work the system, even if the system is wrong. Sandberg discusses the many challenges women face with regard to powerful women being not well-liked and the trap of women who are nice being assumed incompetent and women who are competent assumed not nice. She acknowledges this is not right, but gives great advice on walking the line, nonetheless. Using a negotiation as an example, she advises women to “think personally, act communally,” prefacing the negotiation by explaining they know women often get paid less than men so they are going to negotiate rather than accept the original offer. “By doing so, women position themselves as connected to a group and not just out for themselves, in effect they are negotiating for all women.” Sandberg advises the use of the word “we” instead of “I” whenever possible. She warns, though, that a communal approach is not enough and women must also provide a legitimate explanation for the negotiation.

Combine niceness with insistence. This piggybacks on the previous idea. Sandberg cites Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, who says this means being “relentlessly pleasant.” This involves “smiling frequently, expressing appreciation and concern, invoking common interests, emphasizing larger goals” and approaching situations as solving a problem as opposed to being critical.

Speak up, stand up. Sandberg talks a lot about how men in power can help women by standing up for them in key situations and she gives many encouraging examples of when this was done for her. She notes Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express, as a leader in this area who acknowledged that “in meetings, both men and women are likely to interrupt a woman and give credit to a man for an idea first proposed by a woman.” Chenault stops meetings to point this out when he sees it—making quite an impression coming from the top. Sandberg advises that anyone can do this, though. “A more junior woman (or man) can also intervene in the situation when a female colleague has been interrupted. She can gently but firmly tell the group, ‘Before we move on, I’d like to hear what [senior woman] had to say.’” Sandberg explains that this not only benefits the senior woman who was interrupted but boosts the junior woman as well, because speaking up for someone else demonstrates a communal spirit—and confidence—and shows the junior woman is both competent and nice.

In Lean In, Sandberg acknowledges the systemic issues women face that can make it more difficult to rise to the top, but also offers a useful mix of overarching ideas for society with nuts and bolts tips for women at work. Just like with the Skinny Chicks‘ secrets and a glimpse into Upton’s regimen, I can incorporate those ideas that fit my lifestyle, not expecting to find myself on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition or in a C-Suite, but inspiring me to run that extra mile or to speak up with confidence on something I’m knowledgeable about with colleagues.

Beyond Betty: Moving from feminism to human rights

Was the problem that had no name possibly the lack of Wi-Fi?

I wish that line was mine, but I have to give the credit to Noreen Malone, who in a Slate discussion of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (on the 50th anniversary of its publication this week) noted:

...Work doesn’t automatically put you on the road to self-actualization (as Friedan implies it does), and the degree to which it contributes to it probably waxes and wanes at different points in a person’s life. What about women (or men!) who genuinely do find the bulk, or even part, of their creative fulfillment in more traditional homemaking tasks, or at least less corporate ones, and who derive their sense of mission from helping people—even if mostly the ones related to them? Friedan doesn’t allow for those scenarios, at least among the educated women she’s writing about, and that feels weird. Also oddly missing in the book’s treatment of parenting, was any kind of real consideration of kids’ needs...

To Malone, I say right on!

I won't lie, I enjoy working, and of course I've been lucky to have a very unique situation (enabled by Wi-Fi!) that let me ride the fence of the SAHM thing and having work satisfaction in semi-creatively satisfying work.

But, I don't know that there are sooo many jobs out there that are sooo interesting and stimulating that workers don't have to psych themselves up for just as much as someone at home would have to do some mental gymnastics to make a "baked potato" or "vacumming" interesting. At least when you do those things you're not doing it for "the man" but for yourself and your own family!

I'm also willing to wager that my grandma who worked in a canning factory would have welcomed the life of suburban housewife ennui...

As a friend commented when I posted the Slate article on Facebook, "That's always where the feminist lionization of work breaks down. Those women are writers and academics, which is not the same thing as having a typical job. When your whole job is self aggrandizement, then of course you love your work! When you're scrubbing toilets or asking would you like fries with that?—not so much." So true!

This recent New York Times opinion piece by Stephanie Coontz attempted to answer "Why Gender Equality Stalled" and raises some interesting points. An excerpt illustrates the frustrating bias toward the idea that women necessarily want to work instead of taking on child- and home-care duties:

So, especially when women are married to men who work long hours, it often seems to both partners that they have no choice. Female professionals are twice as likely to quit work as other married mothers when their husbands work 50 hours or more a week and more than three times more likely to quit when their husbands work 60 hours or more.

The sociologist Pamela Stone studied a group of mothers who had made these decisions. Typically, she found, they phrased their decision in terms of a preference. But when they explained their “decision-making process,” it became clear that most had made the “choice” to quit work only as a last resort — when they could not get the flexible hours or part-time work they wanted, when their husbands would not or could not cut back their hours, and when they began to feel that their employers were hostile to their concerns. Under those conditions, Professor Stone notes, what was really a workplace problem for families became a private problem for women.

This is where the political gets really personal. When people are forced to behave in ways that contradict their ideals, they often undergo what sociologists call a “values stretch” — watering down their original expectations and goals to accommodate the things they have to do to get by. This behavior is especially likely if holding on to the original values would exacerbate tensions in the relationships they depend on.

But, it's really not that simple. Pew Research studies show that the majority of women want to work part-time (which is one reason why Obama's recent attention to universal pre-K may be misguided). Most working fathers, though, say they want to work full-time. At least according to this study, it would appear that men and women want different things—and to me, that's OK! It's also fair to note that different men and different women want different things.

No study is going to capture everyone's wishes and no policy is going to necessarily make everyone's path to what they want easier. We have to blaze our own trails a lot of the time.

Coontz observed:

Under present conditions, the intense consciousness raising about the “rightness” of personal choices that worked so well in the early days of the women’s movement will end up escalating the divisive finger-pointing that stands in the way of political reform. 

One one hand, I am skeptical of "political reform" based on almost everything I've read in recently years from feminists that places workforce engagement above caring for young children and goes to far as to view children basically as some sort of commodity or cogs in the capitalist machine. But, the conclusion of the Coontz piece leaves me hopeful that maybe the feminist movement is beginning to see that work is not the be-all-and-end-all of "equality" (or life) and that different people want different things, and that "people" also means men.

Our goal should be to develop work-life policies that enable people to put their gender values into practice. So let’s stop arguing about the hard choices women make and help more women and men avoid such hard choices. To do that, we must stop seeing work-family policy as a women’s issue and start seeing it as a human rights issue that affects parents, children, partners, singles and elders. Feminists should certainly support this campaign. But they don’t need to own it. 

What Coontz might not realize, though, is that for many talented, educated and able women such as myself, putting my "gender values into practice" for me meant scaling back my career when my baby was born, working part-time from home to be with her, and navigating my own on-ramp as she gets older.

I agree that feminists should not own the work-family policy campaign, because based on what we've heard from leading feminist voices in recent years (Linda Hirshman, I am looking at you) they're going to get it wrong!

On Vagina

Well, I finally broke down and got Naomi Wolfe's Vagina: A New Biography. I thought it might help me out with my sexuality, but I think instead it led to a fight with my husband.

The other night when we were supposed to do it, he did what he usually does—laid down next to me with his eyes closed like he was asleep and started rubbing and scratching my back. I usually do the same thing and if we don't pass out and fall asleep we might start kissing, I might start stroking him and it might lead to sex. Or, it might lead to me complaining about why he always lays there with his eyes closed.

See, Naomi Wolf told me that the adoring male gaze is part of the "Goddess Array" and that I need it to feel special and get turned on. It kind of made sense. After nine years of marriage I do get the feeling that he doesn't even look at me, pay attention to me or notice me, really. I feel pretty fine about how I look and so I don't need his gaze for self-esteem, but I do understand how, if he gave me more of a signal that he saw me, I might respond with a little more fire than I do.

So, I called him on the eyes closed thing. He defensively gave me a bunch of excuses that it was awkward for him to stare at me when he was so close, that his eyes couldn't focus well, he didn't even have his contacts on. It kind of made sense what he was saying, but, Naomi said he should be looking at me.

He's also supposed to treat me like a Goddess—this is never going to happen.

One of the things I value about my relationship with my husband is our friendliness. We are friends. We are friends who have sex. As much as I may be into my power as a woman, I don't think he is ever going to look at me as a Goddess. That's not to say I don't think I am worthy. I do. It's just not who my husband is. And I don't think he's the type who would grow into it and I'm not sure I want him to—it sounds kind of smarmy.

There's a lot that's good about the Vagina book, but there's a lot that's corny—and suspect.  Lots of reviews get more into it (The New Yorker, Jezebel, Feminste, WIRED...) so I am going to stick to a my personal reaction rather than anything societal or overarching.

Many times while I was reading it, I couldn't help but wondering, what about the guys?  It was all, women want this...women need that. It seemed to have an undercurrent of...men just want to get laid and so they need to do all this attentive stuff for their women and the men will get better sex out of it. There was this unspoken assumption of men taking the lead sexually and that men were kind of monolithic in their sexuality. I realize the book wasn't supposed to be about men's sexuality, but it did seem to assume a lot about that.

I like the idea that our bodies (our vaginas) should be sacred and private and not abused or made fun of. I don't think it's revelatory that if women are raped it damages them wholly, not just physically in their vaginas (Wolfe has much to say about rape as weapon of war and such, and I just kept thinking, of course, of course, these things destroy women's self-confidence and lives overall).

It makes sense, too, that a woman with a satisfying sex life in a good relationship would have the happiness, peace and wellness spill over to other areas of her life, like work and creativity, as well. However, I don't think that it has to be vaginal sex only and I don't think that an otherwise healthy woman who has not been raped or otherwise damaged and abused but who may not be having amazing vaginal sex will necessarily suffer in other areas of her life. Sex is not everything.

I don't say this just because I don't have vaginal orgasms (never have). I say it moreso because I'm not that interested (at all?) in having vaginal orgasms. If it happened, cool, but I don't feel like I am missing something and am not now driven to pursue it. Of course, maybe it's a shortcoming in me that I don't even care. But, to me, it's not the kind of orgasm my husband gives or doesn't give me, or even the sexual techniques at all that are important, it's the attention and care overall (yes, sometimes lacking) but I don't think it has to be so prescribed.

Wolfe does say in the book that she doesn't mean any of this to necessarily be prescriptive, but more of an a la carte assortment of things she found out in her research and connections she made. I question much of what she calls "science"—she relies a lot on rat studies to make her cases. She mentions as an aside a sugar rush from semen and I just wonder how much a guy would have to cum for the amount to, chemically, really evoke anything physiologically in a woman that she could really feel. One Amazon reviewer lists suggestions for Google searches pointing toward articles critical of Wolfe's interpretation of the science: Neuroscientists take aim at Naomi Wolf's theory of the "conscious vagina"; Naomi Wolf's "Vagina" is full of bad science about the brain; Pride and Prejudice, by Zoë Heller (The New York Review of Books); Feminist Dopamine, Conscious Vaginas, and the Goddess Array; Of Mice and Women: Animal Models of Desire, Dread, and Despair; and Upstairs, Downstairs; `Vagina: A New Biography,' by Naomi Wolf (The New York Times).

Also, the tantric coach who charges $150 per hour for "yoni" work, including hands-on massage grosses me out.

I enjoyed reading about different historical mores related to the vagina, although certain parts of the past and certain current practices within cultures that denigrate women were troubling. If anything, it made me grateful to be a grown woman in the West married to a kind, if not stunningly tantric, man, even with the porn-addled consciousness that supposedly ruins us all. (I think some people of my and my husband's age may have escaped exposure to and getting hooked on or damaged by some of the more distasteful or harmful porn.) I have to be careful not to focus on ways my husband may not be treating me like the Goddess I allegedly am. Maybe try and come up with some ways to quietly evoke this in him, because my direct requests for things like eye contact don't usually work. I'm not sure knowing what I know now after reading Vagina will improve my sex life, but maybe that wasn't the point. It was her personal discovery, not mine.

Why have kids?

I took a little break from blogging to enjoy the last days of summer with my little one before ...gulp!... Kindergarten. We had some wonderful times and it was with wistful feelings that I let her go. She's doing great, though.

This is kind of long and maybe a little rambly, but just trying to sort out thoughts while fresh...

This week I read Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti, the "poster girl for third-wave feminism." And while I disagree with a lot of what's in the book, she's not wrong.

Why Have Kids is a bit of compendium of what's been going on in the momoshpere the past few years. Valenti's got Linda Hirshman, she's got Elisabeth Badinter (here too), she's got Erica Jong. She talks about attachment parenting, the anti-vaccination crowd, breast vs. bottle. In case you missed any of that. She references Babble, Blue Milk, Jennifer Block, Megan Francis, Katie Granju, Rikki Lake's Business of Being Born and even The Feminist Breeder.

What's just a little bit different about Valenti, though, and what makes her and the book so likable for me, even though her assertions go against my own experience, is she thinks what she thinks and expresses it, but is open enough to admit that other ways of doing things are understandable—which is kind of the place I've come to after five years of parenting. For example, Valenti calls Jennifer Block's book, Pushed, "wonderful," and sincerely was into breastfeeding, pursuing pumping valiantly as her preemie did time in the NICU. I was moved by her tenacity and totally get why she'd be mildly snide about lactivist rhetoric, even as much as I am a proponent—and huge fan—of breastfeeding. I have no idea what it's like for it to be hard to breastfeed and so I have to take Valenti's recounting of her experience for what she says.

It was bothersome, however, when Valenti attempted to minimize the benefits of breastfeeding a la Hannah Rosin, citing Joan Wolf. I can appreciate something being hard, something not working and a person making peace with it. Breastfeeding is not the be-all-and-end-all, of course. But don't be delusional and say things like formula is "just as...healthy a choice as breastfeeding." I often feed my kid breaded fish filets. They're easy and she likes them. But I don't think they are just as healthy as say, quinoa with kale, or something.

I also am conflicted about the idea that "Women Should Work," presented as a "truth" in Valenti's "lies" and "truth" structure of the book. Women should work if they want to (and of course, if they must). I don't like the idea of infants in daycare. I have a real problem with it, really. I understand, of course, that people do what they have to do. It's when they don't have to do it that it bothers me. Of course, I know it's not my business and I accept that. I would just never put a child under 2 (and that's the low end) in daycare unless it was absolutely necessary for the family's survival. At the same time, I don't like the idea of women who want to work having to give up an important part of who they are, not to mention some modicum of financial independence—just in case. I get it. I had the unique situation of being able to be really hands on 24/7 with my baby while doing satisfying work and earning enough to get by on my own (at least temporarily) in the unlikely even that we were left alone without my husband, and so I can't honestly be too hard on others for their choices (and besides, as I said, it's not my business). But, what I would push for is not necessarily affordable infant daycare (preschool, sure) but subsidized maternity leave, more part-time work/job sharing, more teleworking, an acceptance of bringing pre-crawlers into the office, and on-site daycare for older babies.

So I think in some ways here my views intersect with Valenti's but I'll never ever be gung-ho about daycare for infants. See, I disagree with another of Valenti's "lies," that "Children Need Their Parents." Most especially they need their mothers as infants and then, yes they do need their parents. The real idea behind Valenti's assertion is that kids need more than just their parents, I think. And of course I agree, for older kids. My daughter benefited greatly from going to preschool and being in the care of other adults for a few short hours a few days a week. Now she's doing well in Kindergarten (as much as we can know after a week). But really, I was the big influence in her life during these first most formative years and that's the way I like it. I've written before about how important a mother's influence is to a girl and how the nuclear family (another thing Valenti likes to point out is being phased out) establishing it's own sense of being a "tribe" is. This is not to the exclusion of others, this does not mean we don't have friends or are not part of a diverse community, but I think it's important to imprint on a child early on "who we are" as a family. I think it enables them to go out into the world and glean things from these "others" while remaining firm in who they are.

I liked when Valenti discussed the trope that motherhood is "the hardest job in the world" because I've always felt it's not a job at all, but a relationship. (I could have sworn I blogged about this before, but now can't find any reference to this idea, and someone else has ran with it, to much acclaim...) I don't expect pay and I can't be fired! My performance tends to fluctuate according to my mood and circumstances much more than my performance in the work I do professionally. It's just not even in the same realm as paid work, and I would never want it to be.

So, that's why I say I disagree with Valenti, but can see she's not wrong. Can anyone be wrong about this stuff? How we cobble together our lives is very personal and who among us doesn't create an a la carte life, picking and choosing elements of many paths and philosophies to fit what's best for us? It is her approachable voice and her openness to the idea that some stuff (breastfeeding, AP, staying home) may be OK for others, even though it wasn't for her, that brings such great balance to the book. She somehow manages to do it without seeming wishy-washy.

I'm coming from a different place, though. I guess I could call myself an essentialist. I fully embraced that, as a woman, with the baby having grown in my body, having come from within my body and having been fed solely from my body for the first 6 months, that I would be the primary when it comes to my kid. I fully expected this and I didn't have a problem with it at all philosophically and not much in practice, either.

Sure, there were many times I was tired and worn out from mothering an infant (then toddler, then preschooler—each age with its distinct challenges) but the deal was I'd stay home with her and do my consulting part-time and my husband would stay in his job and be the primary wage earner. I won't lie, there were times when the menial tasks, things like having to pick up toys all the time, got on my nerves. I really didn't like "playdates" til my kid was old enough to have a friend over sans mom and I could actually use that time to get things done. But I always felt like I was doing something important and right by being home with her for these earliest years. As our kid got older, my husband has taken on a more hands on, bigger role in parenting, but I'm still the primary when it comes down to it, and I think I will be til the day I die. He's a great dad. That's just the way it is for us. Sometimes I feel under-appreciated by my husband, who expresses a little envy at my getting to stay home all day for these early years (forgetting how I often stay up til 1 am getting client work done after having had to do kid stuff during the day). But, all in all, the years I spent at home with my young child were golden to me and now, on the edge of ramping back up job-wise with my kid in school full-time, I'm feeling nostalgic already...they went by really fast.

I suppose young women today can't be blamed for not being in touch with themselves as "natural" women (something feminists today seem to so hate the idea of). We live in a world where many of women's most natural characteristics and functions are reviled. There's no magic in menstruation, many women wax or shave themselves into nearly hairless fembots, it's no wonder many are put off by breastfeeding or find it gross. Eww! Female body fluids! Yuck! Very sad, actually, but I can't blame the young women, it's the culture they're raised in. To me, it's a failing of feminism that it is this way.

So, I don't personally get why so many women, as described by Valenti, seem so surprised at the work involved with—and discontented with the reality of—mothering a young child. And many of these are women who use daycare and don't even deal with said children all day long.

Maybe it's an age thing. At 40, I'm seven years older than Valenti and maybe older than many of her "ilk." I had my kid at 35 and had plenty of fun before that so I wasn't bent out of shape by the idea that I wouldn't be able to go out without the baby for a while if I was going to do full on breastfeeding, no pumping and that kind of thing. I really didn't want to "go out" for the evening at all during my kid's earliest days (OK, year...) It wasn't because I was depressed or a hermit or anything bad, it just wasn't where I was at at that time. I was into the baby.

Or, it could be my blue collar roots—I don't have the expectation that life should be easy and I pretty much thank my lucky stars every day that I have a white collar consulting job, as middling as it may be, it's not backbreaking and I enjoy it. And I am super thankful that I had the good fortune to be at home with my baby.

Who knows? Valenti describes a status quo wherein women are sold a bill of goods about how blissful it is to have a baby and then face the "truth" of how much it can suck. I mean we all have bad days, but yeah, lowered expectations, people!

For all the distancing of themselves from what felt (and feels) so natural to me (birth, breastfeeding, wanting to be with my small child most of the day) that many contemporary feminists seem to do—whether because they truly don't feel that pull, or because they have been well-taught to turn their backs on that pull in the name of the cause—I wonder why some of them do have kids at all, then.

Valenti argues that there is still a strong cultural expectation—assumption even—that a woman wants to, or will, have children. This is somewhat surprising to me in this day and age and I am prone to disbelief, but again, since I'm a woman with a child, I feel somewhat unqualified to tell other people what they feel who claim to experience this pressure. But, if you're a strong feminist who doesn't want kids, you won't cave to the pressure, right? Maybe again, some people just don't know what they're getting into, I suppose and just go for it. That's kind of what I did and it worked out.

I have to say I didn't think deeply about it before going forward with having a baby. I had kind of given up on even getting married to some extent right before I met my husband. I wasn't at desperation age yet (only 29) so I can't say for sure, but I think I was actually OK with not getting married anyway. I was kind of just floating through life, trying to earn a living, have a good time and that was that. If I met someone, great! And I did. And it turned out we talked about it while dating and he wanted kids, well, one kid, anyway,  was what he said, and I was like, sure, fine, whatever. That's what some people did, right? They got married and had a kid, or kids. So, why not me? Do I sound really vacant or stupid for putting it that way? Maybe. But I bet lots of people are that way.

In the same way I didn't think deeply about whether to have a baby, I didn't have an idea of being the "perfect mother" that seems to be a big theme for discussion (Valenti cites Judith Warner's book, Perfect Madness). We hear so much about all the pressure moms are under to be "perfect," but really, is that pressure truly there? How much of that is put on people by themselves because of an initial amount of hubris to even think in the first place that achieving perfection is possible? We see "perfect" women, actresses, supermodels, on TV and in the movies and yet most of us have come to terms that we just need to do the best we can to stay healthy and that those people are professionals and or anomalies. So why can't we understand that perfection in a relationship (remember, being a mother is a relationship, not a job) is an unattainable—and vague—goal? Some feminists argue a deep-seated, almost conspiratorial agenda is in place to keep women down by playing with their minds to focus them on this perfection in parenting, but I just don't know. Aren't we all smarter than that by now?

My favorite line in Why Have Kids? was: "The truth about parenting is that the reality of our lives needs to be enough." And, of course, this is right on. Only when you embrace the imperfection can you begin to appreciate the tender beauty of parenting. And we all have different realities, it seems.

 

Mothers—and others—do best when they're allowed to be whole people

I used to say you can have it all, but not at the same time—a cliché with some truth to it, though not my own concept, of course. Now more and more women with experience are coming out with this truth, following years of trying to pull it off. In the past, I didn't think it was so important for mothers to hold high-level positions, I mean, being a mom is very important in itself, right? I've changed my mind, though. Yes, raising children is important, but women who are mothers really do need to be part of business and government at the highest levels in order to ensure balanced policymaking. Here's a very good article wherein one woman from the highest ranks shares her experience and notes what needs to change.

  

Reading comments online to this and corollary articles, I'm struck by the lack of big-picture thinking many people seem to have. I really appreciated this article in terms of it being another voice coming out in support of work-life balance in general—and for moms/parents in particular. I think it's part of the slow, but certain, wheel of change that will bring us to a better place.

I am reading Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy by Chris Hayes and it discusses the problem we have in America now with a relatively small and non-diverse leadership of our institutions, insulated at the top, who've failed us. Hyper-competitiveness and ego (the whole work-time machismo thing of being there grinding away into the night is an example) plays a role in causing these folks to actually not have the best or even good solutions to many of the challenges we face as society.

Ensuring there are mothers in high-level government and business positions will help diversify the leadership and balance policymaking. So, to me, it's not really so much about whether or not I personally "have it all." I may not want "it all," but some people do and being a parent should not keep them from achieving it.

In the bigger picture for women who may be more ambitious than I and have it in them to do bigger things, it must not be at the expense of their families—we need them in these positions of power.

Regarding work-life balance for all and in general, also revealed in comments is how some people just can't get their heads around this the concept at all. "Is it fair for childless people to have to work extra hours..." they ask. No! Nobody needs to work so much. Perhaps even more people are hired (thereby helping unemployment) and we all work a little less. Europeans seem to have a handle on this. Why, oh why, is there this assumption here in American that there is always so much very urgent work to be done that can't wait til 9-5 tomorrow? Or, maybe 9-12 pm after the kids are in bed, before which an employee took off at 2 pm? The world is not going to fall apart if certain things happen a little later instead of now. Of course, there are exceptions in emergency responder fields, certain service jobs that are less of "emergencies" but are based on timing, but don't be ridiculous, like I said, they seem to manage in other countries.

Those already well-positioned in life have to take the leap to claim it and we have to make it such that it's socially unacceptable and gauche to grind for hours and hours and hours all the time at the expense of everything else. For example, one commenter on the New York Times Motherlode blog's coverage observed, "I've learned that, in Germany, staying back late at the office too often raises questions about competency. My former boss got plenty of unpleasant scrutiny because he chose to stay back every night until 10pm, rather than go home and face his marital situation. Unfortunately, it made him look incompetent and unable to do the job in the allocated time and didn't help him when it was time to renew his contract; he was let go."

NPR did a series on work-life balance a couple of years ago. The concept has definitely been floating around for at least a few years now, so please, take it down a notch, America! We'll probably get better results anyway.

A little help, please? Oh...nevermind.

After reading The Conflict and at my early parsing of TIME's attack on attachment parenting, I felt like I'd seriously turned the corner on thinking the U.S. should do more to support families. The TIME article seemed to me to be shameful deflection (strategic?) from the need for Americans to push for the first-world support other industrialized nations have for families, and I was particularly inspired by Chris Hayes speaking about this on his show.

But, I am uncertain again. While I could get over the fact that most of the mainstream commentary I've read reflects complete cluelessness of the fact that their corporate/capitalist task masters delight at them squabbling over how long to breastfeed and denigrating the value and importance of parenting in favor of work, work, work for the machine, I can't get over some people's willful ignorance and denial—even to the point of criticizing and turning away those who would help them, as illustrated by Whoopi Goldberg's comments on The View which were echoed by Elizabeth Hasselbeck. They griped about an initiative put forth in New York to support breastfeeding in hospitals, with Hasselbeck particularly complaining about being woken by lactation consultants reminder her she needed to breastfeed. Well, sorry, honey, you do have to feed them at least every two hours, there's really no way around it, except, uhm...formula. So that's why you want the formula because you can't be bothered to feed your infant in the middle of the night? You don't want to be bothered?

Indeed, on a recent New York Times Motherlode blog post, commenters reacted to the question of whether Americans really do want to encourage breastfeeding. One "Ivy League-educated, white collar professional who votes Democrat" located in DC said, "Honestly, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to breastfeed my future children...I don't want to be chained to them and I want my partner to have the chance to bond with them as much as I do. I just wish it were more socially acceptable to say so." Willful ignorance. Even from the supposedly educated. What can you do?

I commented also, observing that I don't think Americans really do want to encourage breastfeeding. Every time I have a discussion with someone outside of an immediate circle of people I know breastfed (like from my natural birth class, etc.) it devolves into countless tales of how they wanted to so badly and yet couldn't and how they are tired of hearing about it and being made to feel guilty. It's as thought they can't understand the difference between appropriate education and public health messages versus their own personal experiences, and they refuse to hear, even in a very non-confrontational and abstract way, that there were things that could have been done differently that might have helped them succeed. These things aren't said to make them feel bad, but to demonstrate that it wasn't their fault and that women do need more education and support—and still they are angry and don't want to hear it. Then, we have voices like Goldberg and Hasselbeck slamming breastfeeding support initiatives. I am beginning to think people don't care and don't want help. Kind of like obesity...people are willfully ignorant and undisciplined. I can't imagine how breastfeeding advocates go on with the hopeless American public. What's troubling, though, is having a desire to move toward a national healthcare program, because it's the right thing to do and being disgusted at all the cost savings and health benefits lost that could be had if more women were committed to breastfeeding.

In a Facebook discussion with a mom-blogger "friend" I tried to cool the escalation concerning the TIME cover by noting the Chris Hayes story on helping out parents, you know, why can't we all get along and work together to get parents the support they need...only to have her say, "I totally agree. There are more pressing issues that should be delved into than the breastfeeding debate. But two words I feel should never be uttered in the same sentence are ‘politics’ and ‘parenting’ [emphasis mine]. Especially when certain figures are spouting off in books about something they have no idea. Take a step down and see what real middle-class parents go through, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No nannies, no cushy bank account, no advisers whispering in their ear or ghostwriters on the payroll." OK, OK, I get the anti-Ann Romney dig, but, how are we supposed to make change if we can't talk about parenting and politics together? Duh.

Children can't really speak up for themselves. It's up to us to do it and these people don't even want to do that? They'd rather just kvetch about how hard parenting is and how much they can't wait for "wine o'clock" and love to drink and swear! Oooh, you are so bad! YAWN.

So, people need help, but they don't want help. Or they want help in the form of free childcare, but don't bother them about breastfeeding? I don't get it.

It could easily be argued that supporting parents is the right thing to do and that things like protected jobs, subsidized parental leave, enhanced laws supporting breastfeeding and such are good for society overall because well-tended-to infants and children grow into better citizens. Although, not everyone thinks so, and people can't even really agree on what infants and small children need, even with humans having had a model for thousands of years, the expectations of which are coded into a baby's instinct—and into mothers if they aren't completely damaged or brainwashed by modern society.

Another commenter on the Motherlode post about Americans' view on breastfeeding noted of state supported benefits for new parents "...these are costly social policies. And they make sense for Sweden and France, because they have relatively low populations that are aging—low birth rates!—and they want desperately to ENCOURAGE people to have children. In the US, we have a huge population—overpopulation!—and huge immigration (much of it illegal)—and the last thing we need is "more babies." We have way, WAY too many babies as it is. Our policies reflect OUR reality—that we wish to (mildly) discourage childbearing, or at least keep it to one or two children per family." And, that, too resonated with me from a strictly short-term, pragmatic perspective.

As for me, I feel fortunate to have had the time to plan for a child and, with my husband, take matters into our own hands to give her the early childhood we wanted her to have, and that we think is important.

I read a really fascinating review of The Conflict just this morning that touches on an aspect of it I had not yet explored. One part of the review riffs on a 1980 article in which social critic Robert Crawford used the term “healthism” to refer to a new preoccupation of the middle class with personal health and wholesome lifestyles, drawing a connection between healthism and political disengagement. This is done as a parallel to the "naturalist parenting" (or attachment parenting) philosophy that The Conflict is critiquing. The review noted, "A sense of impotence—'I can’t change the world, but at least I can change myself,' as Crawford put it—fed the mania for vitamins, exercise, herbal supplements. And in turn, as people poured more energy into their own health, they had less time and inclination to invest in civic or political involvement. Since 1980 this outlook does not seem to have abated, to say the least, and for parents it applies doubly to their children. In shaping contemporary parenthood, this retreat to the private sphere has been at least as important as a retreat to nature."

And after reading that, the notion of "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," however patronizing this can sometimes sound, came to mind. Although I think the reviewer might not be on board with this "retreat" into what we can control (more of a refocus, I would say), I do feel somewhat politically disengaged—and confused by my fellow countrymen and women about what the heck they want for their own children anyway. So why wouldn't I retreat (refocus) and just bolster my own child in the way I see fit? I don't feel a connection with many other Americans about raising children based on the majority of comments about attachment parenting and such, and these people don't seem to really want help, so, what can one do but strike out on their own?

The icing on the crappy store-bought, hydrogenated oil and corn syrup laden cake was an article in Mother Jones today (by a man) completely politicizing breastfeeding in the cheapest way, using a false support of this basic human function as a way to slam Mitt Romney. Again, I'm not exactly a Romney fan, but this is garbage.

So, I would tell women who are looking to breastfeed and otherwise parent on the continuum as much as possible—mamas, you are on your own. You and your, hopefully, conscious, enlightened and supportive husband. You're not going to get anything of value from this American society for a damn long time, if ever.

So, what did TIME have in mind?

As a mother and a graphic designer/visual artist, I was very interested in the controversial TIME magazine cover highlighting its feature on Dr. William Sears and the the philosophy he espouses—attachment parenting.

After my initial personal reaction, I thought I'd discuss the chosen cover image and its effectiveness from a communications standpoint.

First, the chosen cover:


Do you think TIME is aiming to portray what this mother is doing as good, or even normal?

Does the child look OK? Is he comfortable, relaxed, happy? (It should be noted that this is an actual mother and child, they are not models, and she actually does still breastfeed him. He is 3.)

In my view, the answers to all of these questions are NO.

The woman’s pose is somewhat defiant, though her stare is one of relative equanimity.

The child has to stand on a chair to reach her, rather than her coming to the child’s level.

Now, a contrasting cover shot that didn’t make the cut:


The child is in arms, eyes closed and the mother is seated.

She is non-combative, still with the look of calm on her face, but with her head tilted toward the child and her arms cradling him. He is in his own, peaceful, private world, unaware of the camera.

In spite of the child’s size, it’s far less jarring than the first photo. It probably still would have raised eyebrows in a culture where most don’t breastfeed past 6–12 months, but not as much as the chosen image.

My thoughts on the imagery and the public reaction:

In reading lots and lots of online comments on the cover—from people who did read the article, but mostly people who apparently did not read it (they didn’t know the mom and son were real, for example)—I found a range of reactions but they generally fell into some main categories.

Skeeved out

Many, many of the commenters felt this image of a preschool-age child breastfeeding was “gross, sick, repulsive and perverted” and expounded with comments accusing the mother of exploiting the child, saying that he is going to be made fun of when he’s older, saying this is going to make him “go gay,” and so on. Even as a proponent of breastfeeding for as long as is mutually agreeable to mother and child, I can understand how the average joe or jane citizen might find the image at least a little bit off-putting simply because the majority of Americans think breastfeeding is something for infants only and it’s not something they’re used to seeing. Still, I found many of the negative reactions to be needlessly angry and hostile. The jokes at the child’s expense were not funny to me

Pissed off, type A

Another sizable crop of reactions were defensive, likely focusing on the headline, “Are You Mom Enough?” Many women were offended by what they viewed as yet another endorsement of breastfeeding being pushed on them. The über-popular blogger Scary Mommy mocked up the cover expressing this, and her followers on Facebook mostly rallied in agreement. This is an interpretation I didn’t quite understand, admittedly not only because my own experience puts me in a very pro-breastfeeding place, but also because to me it seemed clear that TIME was not trying to present the practice depicted as something necessarily positive. The “Are You Mom Enough?” headline seemed to me to be sarcastic and when coupled with the assertion that “…attachment parenting drives some mothers to extremes…” it is made clearer that TIME was looking at this style of parenting with a critical eye, certainly not endorsing it wholesale (if at all).

Along with this sort of defensiveness, though to a lesser extent, was another, more predictable sort, complaining about the woman’s attractiveness and that she could not possibly be a breastfeeding mother and look like this. I’d say this might have been another strategy choice by TIME to inflict just a little pang of jealously among women, for not only are they competing in the area of “good mothering” but also in “hotness.”

Pissed off, type B

A smaller handful, mostly attachment parenting supporters, felt the cover was sensationalist for their own reasons: it not being representative of the reality of extended breastfeeding—which is usually considered to be breastfeeding for more than one year, but is not usually done quite so…shall we say…flagrantly as is depicted in the cover cover image. Indeed, one of the critical comments from a non-supporter of this kind of parenting snidely questioned whether this mom would pull her son aside for some breast milk after soccer practice if orange wedges weren’t good enough. Realistically, most people who breastfeed, still, at these older ages do it perhaps once or twice a day for bed time or quiet time alone at home.

Also the singular focus on breastfeeding for an article that was supposed to explore attachment parenting overall (of which breastfeeding is an important part, but only one of eight tenets) was puzzling to those who understand AP. This picture didn’t capture the spirit of attachment parenting that parents who practice identify with—mostly that it is very child-centered. (I think most people familiar with and supportive of attachment parenting would have preferred the second photo I show above.) Overall, it seemed to offend attachment parent proponents, though I did see one (and there could likely be more, but this is definitely a minority view) commenter that thought the cover was great in its defiance and her look of just daring someone to give her shit about how she chooses to raise her child.

Generally pissed off and fed up

Perhaps the most common response of all among those identifying as mothers was disgust at a media outlet once again “pitting women against each other” or “fueling the mommy wars.” These comments were often tagged on to those expressed by the previous A and B “pissed” versions, encompassing a range of secondary views on the matter, but generally saying “leave moms alone,” “we’ve had enough” and “we won’t play this game!”

Consensus?

So, what message did the cover convey? TIME skeeved out and pissed off a lot of people!

Obviously, it meant different things to different people—as images often do. But in this case, the meanings seemed particularly disparate.

If TIME sought to critique attachment parenting harshly, I would say it was somewhat effective conveying this with the cover, but not entirely. Many—moms especially—missed that point and were put on the defensive, thinking the question was straightforward and assuming they weren’t “Mom Enough” according to whatever this standard TIME was reporting on was.

If TIME was aiming to bring forth a better understanding of attachment parenting, the cover image was a huge fail, because it’s depicting something with many nuances in an extreme manner. It could be argued that TIME was trying to show one facet of attachment parenting—the so-called extremist—but I’m not sure that its audience is well-versed enough in the subtleties to actually understand that.

Some people chided TIME as a cheap rag scrambling for relevancy that has pulled stunts like this before, with a history of being provocative (Hitler as Man of the Year, 1938). Others reluctantly cheered its business savvy and marketing brilliance for stirring the pot and creating controversy to push sales, regardless of the quality of journalistic integrity.

I suppose it matters what your metric is—sales or clear messaging that gets your point across. Not knowing TIME’s aim (though I have my own suspicions) it’s not clear whether its message was conveyed, but if I had to call it, I’d say it’s a win in the attention grabbing/sales side but a lose in the clear messaging side—that much seems obvious.

More on 'The Conflict'—pushing me to be more progressive

So, I decided I just had to read the book—The Conflict, by Elisabeth Badinter—if I was going to participate in any discussions of it and I am glad I did.

First I must say I am sorry for calling her a "bitch" in my last post. I had some misgivings about giving her money from the purchase of the book, as she is a billionaire whose business promotes formula companies big time, so it could be said that there's a conflict of interest there, but, again, I felt like if I was going to comment extensively or have views on it, I'd better read it. (And I don't think her screed is some strategy to bolster formula companies' position, but to protect the French way of life as she knows it.)

In the book, Badinter's tone was not shrill or condemning of the individuals who would choose to practice what she calls "intensive mothering"—much of which is part of the suite of practices in what's more widely known as "attachment parenting" (AP)—but rather but more of a critique of the overarching societal effects of these practices (or what she believes them to be). I have to say, the synopses and articles on it don't have the subtlety of the book itself and Badinter herself comes across softer in parts of the book than in interviews she gives. Many of the ensuing responses from AP, 3rd wave types, kind of like myself, seemed defensive, too, and we have here a cycle of female defensiveness that's kind of funny.

Much of the book deals with discussion of  encouraging birth rates among nations (which is up for discussion of whether that's even a good thing) and how various family policies affect this, which I found interesting. America seems to be an anomaly since we don't really have any kind of government policies supporting families and yet our birth rate is solid. Still, after reading the book, I am leaning more toward support of the Scandinavian-style family policies, not to effect any boom in birthrates (which they don't seem to in Scandinavian countries, anyway), just because I think it is the right thing for a progressive society to do in order to bridge the inherent gap due to biological characteristics of women (we get pregnant and have babies!) and to foster equality, which I believe elevates a society. In my view, this would include ample parental leave (not just for moms) with special support for breastfeeding, part-time employment arrangements for mothers of young children, and high-quality early education—not infant daycare. I have had tendencies in the past to take the "people should be able to do it on their own" line, but if something is really good for families and children, and for women's status, then shouldn't a society work together to help all members achieve this? I'm not talking redistribution of wealth or everyone having to have the same size house or newest car, I'm talking about basics.

Badinter, for her part, predictably praises France (she seems very nationalistic to me), which has more state support for families than the U.S., but has not really gotten on board with the push for breastfeeding or for more egalitarian relationships among men and women. Badinter doesn't seem to get, or want, what's going on with many of the more egalitarian couples in the U.S. (and AP types tend to be progressive and egalitarian, not as a rule but often enough) and Scandinavian countries. She lets men off the hook way too easily (Ph.D. in Parenting focuses on this) and is too in love with traditional French culture and its almost cartoon-like obsession with "sexiness." The idea that babies and children create such a huge impediment to parents' sexuality feels very outmoded, simple-minded and immature to me.

The book is a weird mix of what seems to aspire to be scholarly and what is obviously coming from a very personal place for Badinter. The reader can feel this 2nd wave feminist's tiredness and frustration and worry. She spends a lot of time trying to take down "essentialist" positions about how women are supposed to have a maternal nature, I think because she herself does not have what would be considered a traditional maternal nature. But, I think she oversimplifies what this maternal nature thing is all about. I think her idea of what maternal means is a broadstroked, rubber stamped kind of this that she blames on longstanding pre-feminist cultural mores, but that I just don't see as relevant to most people outside of very conservative or religious corners anymore. The fact that women have more options these days and just because not all women feel "maternal" or want to have kids (all fair and good, fine things) doesn't negate the biological processes with hormones and such that do really exist and are alive and well in the vast majority of women, though. So, while I won't call myself an essentialist in the sense that women have to be a certain way if they don't want to, I do recognize that for most women, elements encoded in their biology play a significant role in their lives, whether anyone likes it or not. So instead of forcing women into the box of turning off their breasts and leaving their infants, so they can be more like men and work, work, work, we should be helping them reconcile their nature with the modern world by keeping room on our modern world for these primal things. (I just started The Continuum Concept now after finishing The Conflict.)

This, I think, may be a key difference between the old and the new "feminism" which has gained ground—we don't want to have to be just like men (or the old school caricature of the workaholic, non-caring, non-parental male) to have equal opportunities. We want to be a part of a progressive society that recognizes the value in what different members of that society have to offer and we want to further human rights to include children's rights—not gain rights for women at the expense of children.

The most disturbing part of The Conflict, for me, was a section toward the end in which Badinter blithely describes the long French tradition of putting children very low on the totem pole of society to the point where "babies were dropping like flies." It brings to mind the old line about how you can judge a society on how it treats the most vulnerable of its people. This concept is explored more in-depth in a piece in The Monthly that observes, "Badinter thinks of herself as a revolutionary and of child advocates as reactionaries, but who really are the reactionaries here, seeking to revert to the past?...The fact is, we don’t need to hark back to the ‘good old days’ to reconcile women’s emancipation with the new ethic of care for children. Nor do we need to apportion blame or guilt. The roadblocks on the path to liberation are not maternalists but government, business and the wider economy."Again, Badinter's views place her firmly in the regressive camp, she sounds very conservative, actually, which on one hand should not be surprising given her wealth and ties to business, but on the other, is counter-intuitive because aren't feminists "progressive"? Apparently they are not all!

On this 'Conflict' thing

My husband is great. He brought home this Marie Claire article (ripped from a gym mag) because he knew it would be right up my alley. I hadn't talked with him about the Badinter book which asserts that certain aspects of motherhood are oppressive and lower the status of women, but he knows how I feel about this stuff. I won't bother discussing too much of the overarching concepts, it's been done, and done well, already. One of the best discussions I've seen has been between Katie Allison Granju (of whom I'm not exactly a fan, but somewhat indifferent) and the notorious (to me) Hannah Rosin on Slate (it's a six-part thing, as of now). I'm just going to ramble a little about my personal thoughts and feelings on this thing.

I just have to say, I really, really don't care what other people do. I might used to have an axe to grind, but I am over that now. There have got to be little minor sparks of light that make people different and these things can just be more of those. What I do care about is when people sniff and snuff at the things I choose to do that are actually quite normal and suggest I am oppressed or brainwashed. I'm not. And I am certainly put off by the idea that as an "educated" woman, I have a responsibility to all of womankind to express my privilege and "liberation" in the manner prescribed by the leading feminist voices of the time, so as not to, you know, lower the status of women. Sorry, I'm more interested in the status of my daughter. Call me selfish.

I didn't even know about "attachment parenting" (AP) or that the things I would do quite naturally out of the box as a new mother were part of a philosophy. I did them mostly because they seemed like obvious choices (to me) and were easy (for me). Or, easier than the alternatives. (I recall a quick past post, Crunchy by Convenience...) Using formula and not being able to breastfeed just never even occurred to me. I don't remember my mom breastfeeding, though I know she did. I remember giving a baby I babysat bottles, but I guess I was kind of clueless about the formula versus breastmilk thing. I hate having to have a bunch of very specific supplies for things (I use wine bottle as a rolling pin and have minimal kitchen gadgets, for example, I like running because all you need is shoes, you get the idea) and I hate cleaning, so bottles, for me, would have been a nightmare. Easier to just whip out my breast as needed! It was no problem having to be with the baby all the time because I wanted to be with the baby all the time. I'd gone out partying for, like, at least 15 years before having a baby at 35, so I wasn't really itching for that. I was, you know, a grown up with a baby!

As far as co-sleeping, quite frankly, it was the best way I could actually get sleep while my kid was a baby and it rolled into an arrangement I'm quite comfortable with still to this day. I lay down with her and read my Kindle (or pass out) while I cuddle her and she falls asleep. Then after a while I break out and enjoy the rest of my night, if I'm not too tired. She can go to sleep on her own, of course, it comes with some argument when it must happen, because who wouldn't prefer to be cuddled to sleep? Oh right...my husband! Which is why not sleeping in bed with him when I don't feel like it doesn't matter. Sex and sleep are two very different things, which many co-sleeping critics just can't seem to get their heads around. And they must be very unimaginative. 

This is one of Badinter's gripes, that co-sleeping and such creates a rift between husband and wife. It doesn't have to, though. After skimming the article and homing in on Badinter's emphasis on the importance of not letting sex fall to the wayside after becoming a mother, I asked my husband if he thought breastfeeding and co-sleeping, or having a kid in general has affected our sex life. He said, "Well it's more vanilla..." I argued that the frequency was about the same (and better than most from statistics I read) and that I am not willing to pay a babysitter for us to go "swing" (haha). So we'll have to be like those 60-year-olds we saw on our honeymoon when we went to Cap D'Adge. But, I digress, quite frankly, it's not the childcare that saps my sex drive, its the vicissitudes of life and my own head. Nothing about the logistics of where people sleep.

And, more about husbands and AP. All I have seen from the culture, now that I am aware of it, has been really involved dads who babywear, et cetera, and are on-board with it all. My personal take is that early infancy is largely the domain of the mom, and for me there was little escaping that and I didn't want to. As my child started getting older, though, and certainly now, my husband plays a huge role, especially for someone who works full time outside of the home. He often spends whole Saturday afternoons with her while I read or do some other stuff I want to do and have "me" time.

As far as diapering, I did use disposable for about 9 months. I felt like I didn't want to be bothered with diapers til I had the mothering thing down. Then my baby got so deliciously fat from all the breastmilk she was drinking around the clock that the disposables didn't fit her chubby little legs right so I explored cloth and fell in love with the cute styles and that was it. It was no big deal to wash them either. Really, no big deal. 

I could go into the same boring details about making my own baby food. I mean, why shouldn't babies, when they're ready to eat, just eat mashed up versions of real food anyway? And how hard is it to mash up an avocado, a banana or a baked sweet potato? Uhm, not hard.

When it was time for my maternity leave to be over (16 weeks where I live, which I funded through acquired sick leave over the course of my 7 years with the organization), I decided she was too precious and I couldn't leave her. Thus began my lovely now nearly 5-year sabbatical from full-time office drudgery, including the hour commute, and my foray into independent consulting. I fear (fear is not the right word, but am not exactly chomping at the bit to...) going back to the grind one day, actually, as inevitable as it seems as my kid gets older and goes on her way through school.

So, I don't get the oppression. It's "oppressive" to have to work for a living, but most adults accept that.

My part-time hobby has been hate-reading (I've really got to stop, but...) and so I would actually love to read The Conflict, but I refuse to give this bitch any of my money, and it doesn't appear to be in the library system, yet. I've purchased other books of people I don't particularly care for, but I can't do it for this one. As Granju points out in her Slate posts, Badinter is a billionaire executive of a PR company representing some of the biggest formula interests out there. And while I am not as much a formula/big business hater as some, I do think they push the envelope when it comes to being the ones who truly pressure women, so it is more than a little disingenuous for Badinter to come out with these high-minded views about pressure on mothers today.

It seems to me the AP contingent is pretty limited and it's still looked on as "funny" (or quaint, or "isn't she a cute little hippie) to do a lot of the things we do, like extended breastfeeding especially and the co-sleeping. So I would hardly say there's this huge pressure. Also, most moms, whether they want to or not, do go back to work after six months probably at the longest. I'm the one that feels a little like the freakish weirdo here—not that I don't secretly like that a little bit!

On a broader scale policy level (because I guess I just do have to go there) I think that denying women's biology—we have babies, we lactate, most of us actually want to be with the babies for at least a good number of months probably beyond six when they're first born—and forcing them into the mold of maleness in the name of equality is not the answer. Setting up state-run creches, having moms strap machines to their breasts while they're working, or manufacturing faux milk so they can work (work, work, work—how some idolize work) seems all like trying to jam square pegs in round holes to me. I think a truly progressive society allows for different types of people to contribute and does best to be innovative in coming up with ways to enhance what people naturally want to do instead of patchworking or slapping band-aids on reality to make a woman match up perfectly with a man.

New perspectives on family support, no thanks to contemporary feminists

The recent discussion of The Conflict (French "philosopher" Elisabeth Badinter's screed blaming what she calls "natural" and "intensive" mothering for lowering women's status) has predictably turned into a moanfest among Americans on the NYT Motherlode, and other internet venues, that we just don't get the same support they do in France (and other European countries) and doesn't that suck.

In my last post I questioned how so many Americans are saying that they can't afford to stay home OR to put their children in day care. I mean, they afford it because they have to do one or the other, obviously, but is it really such a crunch? I was accused of living in a bubble and so on and so forth and I will admit here and now that maybe that is somewhat true. The people I know all can afford it—either staying home or using childcare. I suspect most of the people who read and post to the NYT can also afford it, which is what gets me so cranky. These are the people who have cable, smart phones, minivans, multiple children, get professional portraits taken of their multiple children, shop at Gymboree for their multiple children, have parties at non-home venues for their multiple children, go on nice vacations, eat premium foods—you get the picture. No slam against these people, but please don't tell me how hard it is to get along. But, maybe that's just my bubble.

Now, if you're talking about seriously poor ghetto or Appalachia types, that's another story. Of course. I guess the problem for me is—where one ends and the other begins. Is there a sharp line, is it just a matter of degree, and, I am sort of coming around to the idea that collective help for everybody might be a good idea. I just can't escape what I know about how everyone I know, and even people with less money than my peers and I, live. It seems like there's a lot of excess there and why can't we just help the people who really need help rather than sign up for some weird feminist/socialist utopia that seems to me to be more about bolstering over-educated women who didn't marry well and want to be assured of their fulfillment that they are not open-minded enough to find in the children that nobody is forcing them to have.

I think yappy feminists have ruined it for me.

Let me just say that I consider myself a feminist in the sense that I think women should have full sovereignty over their own bodies and lives. Articles like this, highlighting the egregious flaws of "personhood" measures, for example, make my blood begin to boil. I think women should be able to do and be whatever they want to be. BUT the voices that proclaim women who want to dedicate themselves to motherhood (or for whatever reason, NOT doing all the stuff feminists say they should want to do) make me seriously want to distance myself from feminism. Those who warn of husbands leaving, women losing themselves, those who say they'd be so bored at home with a small child (implying it's because they are just so intellectual they couldn't bear it), these are the types that ruin it for me.

But then I learn about people that actually are disadvantaged, that actually do need help and I can change my tune about not wanting to support others.

A couple nights ago we watched a doc called The Interruptors. The film tells the story of three "violence interrupters" who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. It examines a year in which Chicago drew national headlines for violence and murder that plagued the city. A key player in the film is Gary Slutkin, M.D., Executive Director of Ceasefire, an organization that uses a public health model to mitigate urban violence in Chicago. Dr. Slutkin, an epidemiologist, explains in the film that violence is like a disease. His group's strategy is to treats it like a disease and prevent its spread. He says "When one event doesn't occur, other events don't occur and the neighborhood remains safer. Treating violence like a disease is something that we began to do about 15 years ago when we began to see that violence had characteristics like other infectious diseases. That is to say, one event, in this case a shooting, leads to another shooting just the way a case of flu or case of measles leads to another case of flu or another case of measles. So therefore, of course, we need to interrupt the spread."

And it dawned on me that these people are the people who need the free quality childcare and got me thinking that problems with education and general development, beyond violence and criminality, can also be viewed as a "disease" and that the people are not necessarily bad people, they are just afflicted with this disease.

I don't want to sound greedy. I don't want it to sound like I don't want to be taxed for a program that might help people who don't really need it—like my peers and those a little "poorer" than us—if such a program would also help those really in need.

At the same time, I feel like my way of life and the way I grew up with—mom at home with small children, the freedom, the creativity, the opportunity to bolster individuality—is under attack to some extent. We are called "privileged" when all we've done is work, get an education and prioritize, things that seemingly anyone could do, but for some reasons they don't. We are derided as living in a bubble when what we are doing is focusing on making our lives work.

All I can say at this point is that I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to give my kid the kind of early childhood I want for her. The rest will have to simmer in the murky gurglings of my brain for a while, because I don't have a clear cut position.

Sick of it all, going to hang with my 'Friends'

I want to stop blogging. So stop, right?

Like one or two people read this, aside from the random times I might post a link in a comment to something else on the web.

I find that so much of what I read online is hate-reading. I know I am going to disagree or get riled about something and I read it and I do. Is this a valuable use of my time? Am I wasting precious moments of my life on foolish things?

When I first made the decision to stay home with my kid for a few years I told a friend I would have so much fun...on the side, you know...learn Portuguese, learn to play guitar...while caring for my child and working part-time, of course. She sneered, "Good luck with that!" Knowing, I guess, because her sister had kids that it might have been a bit of an ambitious hope. I also wanted to learn to code (that very generic phrase people use about getting more technical: maybe Javascript, Ajax, JQuery, Ruby, Python—but so far, it has not been something I've enjoyed after trying and I have to admit, I'm not feeling motivated toward that). Thing is, it would NOT have been all that ambitious if I didn't waste so much goddamn time reading and arguing about "parenting" (and related feminist, political, etc....) issues online!

There are just so many annoying things out there that stick in my craw and I feel compelled to respond to. But why? The people putting out that stuff surely don't care what I say. And there is a whole, huge, big nation of people in middle America...Kansas, Indiana, Minnesota...small towns in my home state of Illinois, even blue-collar background types like myself in the city of Chicago...who think all this political/feminist/parenting philosophy stuff is hogwash, bullshit, waste of time, nobody's business and they are just going along with their lives, working their low-paying retail jobs part time, or even staying home in their crappy fixer-upper houses with their 2.5 kids and having wonderfully happy lives. So, I need to stop getting stuck in the idea that everyone's a NYT-reading socialist feminist that I have to argue with.

The places I land on the web tell me different, of course. The latest annoyances being: feminists who actually think griping to Lego about their cute "Friends" line is important, worthwhile work; another article that devolves into highlighting the Lego Friends gripe as an example of modern feminism at work; and a discussion on the NYT Motherlode about the Badinter book on Conflict, bemoaning the "Depressing Lot of the Conflicted American Mother."

On the last point, a discussant caries on about how it's not an ideology that is causing the conflict for American mothers, but rather, economics. (In her post she also notes how Hanan Rosin's breastfeeding article had freed her from the notion that breastfeeding was very important, and so I can make the judgment that she's not very bright—beside the point, but worth noting.) She writes:

I suppose my parting thought about this would be that for most women who don’t have incredibly high paying jobs or wealthy spouses, these “choices,” about work and family aren’t actually choices. We weigh our particular circumstances and attempt to figure out the best course of action. The notion that scads of women are chucking fulfilling jobs to be handmaidens to idealized, natural motherhood just doesn’t ring true to me.

And my thought was that, what on earth are people spending all their money on that they can't afford either staying home, or child care, without thinking that the government should kick in to help them manage their personal affairs? Aside from any value judgment on what is better, both options seem reasonably affordable for normal middle-class working people who don't expect the world for nothing, right? Data shows that 30-40% of mothers with children under 6 do stay home, so it's not unheard of or impossible. I had neither an "incredibly high paying job" nor a "wealthy spouse" and I don't think our family is all that unique. Maybe we are? I don't know. On one hand, I am not completely closed to the idea that some government help might be, overall, in the long run, valuable to society and might help elevate everyone. But on the other hand, I don't see philosophically why these sorts of things should be the government's business and I would worry about abuse of benefits and huge waste, as well as the danger of giving the government a foothold into our personal lives...

In any case, I am so over all this. So, for my own well being I am going to take a break from the sphere of parenting "news" and instead of reading and commenting on stupid articles slamming Lego Friends blocks, I am going to play with my kid with her Lego Friends blocks...and maybe learn some Portuguese and guitar in my spare time, too! I may not have much longer in this at-home-mom gig and I don't want to waste my time!