Against my better judgement I read the book “Yesteryear” about a social media obsessed trad-wife. I am not going to disect or write a long critique of the book, which I felt was not very good. BUT…it has me thinking about the chatter around “trad-wives” and stay at home moms and the man-o-sphere.
I wonder if this conversation is happening in countries with socialist policies: generous parental leave, universal health care, and state run high quality preschool/day care. When those things are in place families can be flexible and women can navigate early motherhood more easily because they do not have to choose between heart and mind.
When I was a senior in college in 1984 I went to a tea with Matina Horner, the then president of Radcliffe. It was a group of around 15-20 undergraduates. She talked about her career and family and when I asked her how she managed to balance motherhood and her career, she made a comment about only needing 5 hours of sleep a night and then told a story about coming home and waking her daughter up to have hot chocolate with her so she could spend “quality” time together. Now I spent a lot of time babysitting young children and reading about child development and something about this did not sit right with me. My first thought was “Is it fair to the daughter to wake her up just so you can spend time with her? Is that even healthy”. My second thought was “I CAN’T survive on 5 hours of sleep every night. It made me question the mantra from a TV commercial that embodied the 60’s and 70’s Gloria Steinem
Cause I'm a woman, Enjoli!
I can bring home the bacon,
Enjoli!
Fry it up in a pan,
And never let you forget you're a man!
I can work till 5 o'clock,
Come home and read you tickety-tock,
Tonight I'm gonna cook for the kids,
And if it's lovin' you want,
I can kiss you and give you the shiverin' fits.
Enjoli... the 8-hour perfume
Looking at those lyrics now I can’t believe how misogynistic they are.
When my daughter was born I thought I was well configured to have a child and a career. I was working at Cornell and they had a day-care that was a national model for high quality infant and preschool child care. My office and apartment were walking distance from the daycare, so I could visit to breastfeed. But our daughter refused a bottle and screamed so much at day-care they actually expelled her. I struggled to concentrate the way I needed to for my job due to new mom sleep deprivation. I was tired all the time. When my husband and I interviewed at Microsoft in the summer of 1989 I asked the HR women about day-care and flex-time knowing what I would need if I was going to succeed at work while being a mom. At lunch I asked the man I was with how he balanced having kids with work and what he did when they got sick and he said, “Oh my wife is a stay-at-home-mom” I sighed as I was really tired from traveling across country with a 15 month old that had woken up at 3am. “That’s nice” I responded and after lunch I could tell that my comment had been conveyed to HR and they clearly had demoted me in the interview process. Thankfully Roy got a job and we moved to the Seattle area.
I didn’t mind being a stay-at-home mom. In fact I really liked it. I have fond memories of walks in the woods, attending mommy and me dance classes, going to the library, hanging out at the playground and pretending to be Peter Pan, doing crafts and cooking together. I tried to imagine having a home business. But I never had the organizational ability or brain space to pull it off. Instead I poured my intellect into becoming a La Leche League Leader and building a passion for maternal child health issues. I did a work share at a women run farm CSA and developed a passion for local agriculture. I loved cooking and baking and spent a lot of time and energy making home cooked meals. I rarely felt bored Even if I was not accumulating my own money I felt I was contributing to the world. I was lucky my husband was never controlling and supported me while he worked. Today one might call me a trad-wife. But was I? I was (and my husband will confirm this) an absolutely AWFUL housekeeper. The house was constantly in disarray and I struggled to stay on top of laundry and clutter and paperwork. Sometimes I even joked that my parenting philosophy was benign neglect rather than helicopter mom.
When we moved back East I had a wonderful helper who did laundry for us and helped me with organization. I had dreams of returning to graduate school. My husband was not working at the time, we had resources and it would have been easy for me to tell him it was his turn to stay home and cook and clean. BUT at the time we had our Miicrosoft stock and to be honest with myself we were having way too much fun together going on long bike rides and sitting at cafes. And I was busy taking art classes that I LOVED. In class one day a fellow painter, who happened to be a doctor and have a PhD in public health, I was talking with her whether I should apply to BU’s school of Public Health and she walked over, stood behind me and looked intensely at my painting and said, “Jill I think you should just paint!”. I knew I was good. My teachers told me I was good and I also knew in my heart I always wanted to be an artist. On top of that we were also trying desperately to figure out how to help our middle child who was struggling and I was filling my days with research about how to help him. So I think a big factor in my reluctance to return to school for a degree or seek a traditional job was I was never bored. Whether I was making art, doing origami, taking a course on EDX, reading, cycling, cooking and baking I was happy to be my own boss. And honestly that is the total opposite of what a Trad-Wife is. I was not doing what I was doing for my husband or for social media. And I was fortunate my husband has always believed in me as an artist and put up with me being a REALLY SERIOUSLY bad housekeeper.
I suppose my choices were risky for me as a women and for us as a couple. As they say sh—t happens. Maybe because I have always believed in my own creativity to come up with solutions I never felt like I needed to choose a path based on the “what ifs”. I still have 1/4 century left (based on my own mom’s passing) to somehow navigate and survive so time will tell. But I am not sure my parent’s meticulous planning for their future necessarily helped them navigate the pain of aging and decline. Life is to be lived.