Same dribble Down Under on 'slacker moms'

I follow some Twitterers in Australia because it gives me fresh tweets in the middle of the night when I sometimes get up and read my Kindle, lying in the dark, next to my kid. I've gotten into this weird habit where I'll wake up in the middle of the night and leave my husband's bed then go into my kid's room and sleep with her on the full-size floor futon—plenty of room for both of us and it's firmer and she is a super sound sleeper so the light of the Kindle doesn't bother her like it would my husband, plus she's got a humidifier in there and I just like it!

So I came across this Sydney Morning Herald article that's been making a bit of a splash: Over-mothered? No, over mothering and it's the same sort of theme I've seen in American mommy culture that I think they're calling the "slacker mom movement." The BlueMilk blogger responded to the post with what I thought were some valid retorts and lots of good links.

A big part of the response was pointing out that it's all cool and liberating for privileged white mamas to be lackadaisical, but if a poor, brown skinned mama went this route, she'd be under scrutiny from more powerful elements than the neighborhood biddies and quite possibly at risk of a visit from Child Protective Services. I get that, and that's valid, but I have to say I'm a little weary of so many discussions turning to my privilege. I know I am lucky and I know I am blessed (or whatever)—and yes, privileged—but each in our own ways we're all muddling through. And hearing other white women trot out the white privilege thing seems like their safe place to critique something, you know, get on the side of some underdog, further under and doggier than the hapless slacker moms.

The response had some other insightful aspects on how "the slacker mother movement seems to be taking a nasty turn lately towards judging mothers it sees as being too dedicated to the pursuit of motherhood." Which would resonate with me if I gave a shit about whether or not some random blatherer on the internet was judging me. (Ph.D. in Parenting had a good post about this the other day.)

Maybe it is because of my place of privilege (oh man, now I'm doing it!) that I have never felt pressure to "mother" a certain way. I did the homebirth thing, I breastfed 33 months, I stayed home with the kid in her earliest years, we co-slept. But the child has seen a lot of Dora and Diego. I've yelled, I've spanked (regret, regret, regret). The child had to have several cavities filled when she was four because I just kind of spaced on the notion that she needed to have her teeth brushed after every meal. (I didn't, and I didn't have many cavities, but maybe I have very unusual teeth, or different saliva, or didn't eat as many foods with sugars in them—who knows, I messed up!) I don't feel excessively guilty about the teeth or the TV, but I'm not going to glibly brag about it either and take on "slacker mom" as some sort of persona.

What I don't get about the "slacker mom" thing is why people would revel in this sense of being crappy at something and not caring—especially when it comes to something as precious and important as one's child. "Slacking" seems to be about backlash against some standard of perfection, but I'd argue that this standard was never real and smart women know this. "Slacking" is just too reactionary.

I don't really embrace the "slacker" persona in anything I do, though. I try to do my best at work, I try to do my best eating healthfully and staying in shape. I try to be kind-hearted and compassionate. Yes, I fall short in these areas, but I don't feel threatened by "perfection" and get mad and run to the "slacker" credo, just saying "fuck all," like, forever and always. I just say, hey, I'm human and I'll just try to do better tomorrow.

The real me is the mom who gets down on the floor and plays with the child—when I feel like it, which is sometimes, but not always. I do art projects...sometimes. I bake for the child's birthday (I am not really so into bringing treats to school because I don't believe school is a place for this and if every kid for every birthday brought treats, they'd really just be having too many treats...) I read to her, do math and science projects with her, a lot of the time, but not all the time. I do enjoy building with Lego. Overall, I'd say I'm into it, but I like my web surfing, beery nights with friends and long runs alone, too. That's what being a normal, balanced person is. At my core though, I have to admit I am pretty passionate about my kid, and I don't care if that's not cool.

I understand the Jane Caro piece is supposed to be humor, but I think that joke is played out.

In a mood

Posted this on Facebook yesterday—made it myself : ) Yesterday I actually also made myself that kind of smoothie, departing from the usual, based on stuff I've been reading in the Conscious Cleanse book (I am taking the book with a grain of salt, as a whole, but there are some useful points). I felt amazing after drinking it, for real. I got a flash of sun and air when I took out the trash, too, and was immediately compelled to go for a run, when minutes before I'd been kind of lumbering around expecting to do yoga in the basement. It was powerful.

(Hold on, being interrupted by kid now who wants to show me a book she just made and feel like I do actually have to stop what I am doing and pay attention. This is my life...)

Anyway, the day yesterday had its ups and downs, but overall was OK. I did my run, I ate healthy the whole day. I took my kid to the library and the nature center (which included a mini-hike in the woods). I made a perfectly lovely and healthy meal for my family—ginger-garlic wild salmon and veggies with brown rice. Read lots of stories to my kid and fell right to sleep with her.

Then, I was supposed to wake up and go spend some time with my husband. But I just didn't want to get up. We were supposed to have sex. It's been a while—over a week. He's been sick. But last night I was just flooded with such exhaustion, I didn't really know why. I tried to figure out why, in addition to being so physically tired I felt awkward and weird about having sex (I sometimes feel this way other times) and gravitated toward the fact that so many women and raped, bullied, abused—in the U.S as well as all over the world. And that in television, movies, even music, sex is portrayed as something I can't really say I like. Lots of domination, violence, women made to look very typecast either as just pretty and empty or sexy and dangerous, I can't pinpoint it, but it goes on and on (my husband, I think, thinks I am crazy, as I tried to explain this to him yesterday and he thinks maybe I consume too much media—and he may be right, but his focus was on the serious rape media, not the cheesy mainstream media that might actually be the problem).

(Hold on—just ran outside twice. The first time to ask my husband why he was taking the crappy car on his outing today when he could be taking the nice car, with heat and a decent stereo—me and the kid weren't going anywhere this morning. Whatever. Then, after coming back inside and noticing he left his credit card on the table, I ran back outside AGAIN, I ran all the way down the block in the street screaming at him, hoping he would notice so he would have his card. If we were normal people who BOTH had cell phones, I could just call him up—I guess that's another story. But, yeah, this is my life...)

So I woke up this morning generally OK. I woke up in bed with my kid. I started in the bed I share with my husband, but I went to bed before him (remember, I was exhausted) but my kid woke up sometime around an hour after I'd drifted to sleep (and it was a really, nice relaxing sleep I'd been in) to pee and I don't know, when she wakes up to pee, I guess I am programmed from when she woke as a baby to go lay down in her room with her, so I did. So we woke up together and we cuddled and she took me through the multiple "I love you mommys" and "You're the best mom evers" and I returned her admiration, sincerely, looking at her beautiful, beautiful face with its big green yellow eyes (almost the same as mine, but darker), marred only by one slightly pink eye from a little cold. She tells me she "just wishes we could get a cat now" (we cannot, my husband is allergic, she will have to wait til she is on her own)..."I wish I could make a big dinosaur" and she means like a larger-than-human-size structure she can go in, replacing her previous desire for a large, walk-in, "hippo robot" she wanted to make before, this new idea prompted by one of the books we read last night.

(Hold on another interruption..."I wish I had glitter..." said in a long, wistful whine...to which I reply, "No. I am not getting you anything or doing anything for you now. I am writing and having my coffee, then doing my exercises and making my breakfast and then, only then, will I do things with you, get things for you or play with you. You have a house full of toys. Go play with your dollhouse, build with your legos, play with your tiles, your k'nex...anything. I am not getting you anything right now... She had now moved on to playing with some tangrams blocks repeating 'Theo, Theo, pumpkin Leo' again and again, then asks me if I like what she is building...)

As I was saying, I woke up generally OK. Most always happy cuddling with my child and seeing her beauty, being grateful for her health, my health, the warm house. But there is that pink eye of hers. I will have to put drops in it from the last time she had it back in November. It's always a struggle. Who likes having something put in their eye? I like doing it even less than she likes getting it, though. And the struggle marks the bad turn for the day.

As I get up to get the medicine and face the day, and the tasks ahead—make breakfast, hope she will eat it, continue to hear and try to follow a barrage of demands for play and supplies, maybe get some client work done, while my husband lumbers around, hopefully playing with her a little bit, as he often nicely does, but leaving messes and getting in the way, too...and I just become overwhelmed with the sense that I don't really get to have a lot of fun or freedom in my life. I bitch and moan. I slip into a really bad mood really quickly.

But now, of course, typing this, I feel like an ass. "I don't get to have a lot of fun or freedom...? Really?" Asshole! Seriously.

(Mommy! I thought we were going to play dress-up dolls!—I am not making this up...)

Seriously, though? This is what I tell myself: "Bitch, you have a motherfucking DAY OFF. And every day is kind of a day off for you right now since you work in yoga pants and each nachos at all hours of the day (that latter bit is changing) watching Girls (or Cosmos, as your intellectual level fluctuates). Anyway, you have a day off today because your big client is off and so they won't be emailing you with stuff. You basically can do what you want all day everyday and so if, intermittently, you have to answer your child's request or pick up after your husband and then suck his cock at night, you better just do it and like it. You know, some women have to walk five miles dodging militant rapists just to get murky water for their starving children to drink? So, STFU."

OK, going to play dress-up dolls now. Hopefully I will get that workout in shortly after. I will, too, be interested to see my husband's reaction when he comes home from his errand and I tell him (and child corroborates) how I ran down the street waving his credit card and screaming.

Making parenting more 'adventurous'

Want to keep your kid up pall night? Have the neighborhood school kids look after your toddler? Don't feel like playing with your kid? It's all good. Other people do it! Maybe not your neighbors, but other people int the world. Just read How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm—And Other Adventures in Parenting.

This totally refreshing "parenting" book (I'm so over that concept, this verb—something we do, implying prescribed behaviors and benchmarks....instead of something we are—a relationship) gives snippets of how parents in other cultures deal with things like bed-time, eating habits, socialization, play. It approaches it all in a very open and à la carte manner, with the main idea not being what American parents do wrong, and aren't we so hapless, but just that there really is not one best way to do anything. So much depends on culture and environment.

One of the chapters I enjoyed most were the one on Argentina and small children not having a strict, set bed time. Whenever I hear about kids going to be at 6 or 7 pm (heck, I've heard of kids going to be in the 5:45 range) it just seems so early to me. Granted, we do the 8–830 range in our home, and everyone has their own schedule, but the strictness of insisting a kid be in bed at X hour, missing socializing, and doing real-world things with family and friends, missing life, is just sad.

In fact, it's more of the ethos of kids being more a part of life—going out to dinner with the family, even if its at 9 pm, going to parties and weddings that may last all night and catching a few zzzzs on chairs pushed together—that I think I love about the Argentina chapter.  Some would argue something like "If I tried to do that with my kid, they'd be a holy terror!" And I would just think, yes, probably, but its only because so many kids in America aren't brought up being a part of adult activities. (Uh-oh, I am sliding into the "what's wrong with America" line...it feels so inevitable, though...)

Another favorite chapter were on indigenous islanders (among other non-Western groups) who, though highly attentive to infants, just didn't play with their kids and thought this was a silly and strange thing. Author Mei-Ling Hopgood gives an interesting brief background on the history of play and toys in America that ties in well with the idea that adults playing with little kids is somewhat not natural and was something foisted on us (mostly moms, of course, as we were the ones at home when all this started mid-20th-century). And she tells of how smaller kids get swooped up into the activities of the older kids and learn socialization from their play in groups.

In most of these cases, parents just don't have the luxury to sit around playing with their kids, anyway, because they have work to do. And another great chapter talks about how small children in other cultures are enlisted to provide real and valuable help with family work, whether its grinding corn, doing the wash, gathering water or looking after little ones. It was really eye-opening to read about just how much children can do at ages we would never think of giving them work, 3, 4, 5. The children take pride in their work and it instills competence that many kids in America don't have even in college when they're clueless about how to even do their own laundry or cook for themselves.

I really enjoyed the book's approach of simply laying out these cultural differences as items of interest rather than necessarily practices we need to take on wholesale. I mean, obviously, it's not always possible or even safe to let small kids run loose in our cities and suburbs the same way people who live in rural settings without cars can, but there are definitely elements we can take away and incorporate, if we so choose.

The title portion, on how eskimos keep their babies warm, talks a lot about babywearing, which I love. One of the nicest things about this book is that some of the practices it describes are of the attachment parenting suite—especially the babywearing, and she mentions that that same mamas who send their toddlers off to play with the bigger kids and don't talk much to them were appalled by video of Americans who they felt let their babies cry too long and put them to sleep alone in a separate room. I like the way the book takes these "attachment" practices out of the realm of some academic philosophy on child-raising and presents in a simple and natural way of this is just what these people do.

The ideas in this post continue, moving on to a related, but different theme, on what teens need. I feel like being high-touch with infants and freer with kids as they get older is something I can run with, and so it was interesting, too, to stumble on a post from sex writer Susie Bright responding to the Atlantic article on mothers and careers...

Challenge: Play more and find a way to make it edifying

I'm having mothering problems. My kid wants me to play a lot more than usual lately. (Maybe it's that preschool is out and instead of four days, she's just going to camp just two days—and of course, she's become used to being with us all day long now, and mostly engaged, after having been on vacation all together as a family for two weeks.) I don't really like playing, though. I feel sad about not liking playing.

One of the big problems I have with it is illustrated in the photo above—kids this age are disorderly. I am an order fiend (to my own standard, I'm sure some people "worse" than me would come into my space and be appalled—it's all a matter of degree). It is extremely difficult for me to find my place in the midst of this disorder. To her, I think, it somehow all makes sense. She's playing classroom. The Duplos in the middle are the schoolbus. The ones on the left are (were?) the classroom. The foam bits on the right are the playground. Presently, in the picture, the animals are hiding the paint they spilled with those paper towels. The paint is marker she drew with on the yoga mat.

Why it is so hard for me to pick a role in this story line and act it out with one of the figurines? That's all I'd have to do, right? My mom used to do it, I think. And yet, I have so much trouble with it. My kid tends to tell me that something I do when I try to do it playing isn't quite right and I (rather immaturely, I admit) get frustrated. I mean, I'd rather be reading or something, and I feel like I am doing something for her by playing and so she should be grateful for my play rather than critiquing it. Then again, if I am doing it for her, why shouldn't she have it her way?

I think I would actually enjoy playing—or doing art or crafts—in such a way that I am teacher. But, my kid doesn't really let me play that role. She kind of likes to run the show. And her show doesn't always (doesn't usually) make sense to me. She makes up words sometimes. Has arrangements I don't quite get. Sometimes she'll come up with something really cool and brilliant, though. But usually, my regimented adult mind can't get past the disorder.

In searching out ideas to help me, I mostly found academic/scientific information saying it wasn't necessary (or necessarily even good) for a child's development to have an adult play with them. But I'm not only concerned with my child's intellectual development (which I think is on track). I am concerned with our relationship.

I have to somehow overcome this. I feel like I should play with her, at least sometimes, and probably more than I do. I want to instill in her a sense that she is worthy, fun, a valuable and interesting person that people should want to engage with and so I don't want to reject her by not playing with her. And, practically speaking, she is an only child, so she has real needs for interaction. We do playdates, but it's just not feasible to do them every single day. I may crave alone time as a world-weary adult, but she is fresh and new and has much to share.

This is where getting high would come in handy—ha ha! I would be able to play so much better if I was high. Not high, I just see messes that I will eventually have to help clean up and my mind is pulled to real life, real issues I want to sort out by reading or writing. But, I digress. I need to expand my consciousness sans chemical aid and make this work. For me as much as for her. It could be a great opportunity to release myself from some of my neuroses. I mean, why this need for order? Have I always been this way? I don't remember being so touched by this need throughout my whole life.

I feel like I used to be so much a better mother to a baby than I am to a kid. Babies you just hold, feed, and you still have your brain to yourself. A kid kind of takes over your brain, if you give it half the attention it needs, or at best splits your consciousness in two somehow. No wonder I feel so nutty a lot of the time!

I have to face this challenge, though. I have to somehow find a way to play with her, ignore the messes and tap into how the make-believe storylines and dialogues might be able to teach me things. And she's been patiently waiting for me to join her by that crazy block pile, so, here I go...