(no subject)

[heidi]

I'm still recovering from an insanely busy weekend, and I know I still owe a tonne of comments, but I did want to post about an article in the New York Times from last week: Our Little Women Problem.
As it seems to be the way things are done around here, I asked my spouse's opinion. Could this working mother thing ever be mastered? "On two conditions," he said, but the rest of the sentence was drowned out by a wail from the other room, where the youngest had raced out of bed so fast that she had collided with her door.
She was also in the mood for poached eggs, which - my husband helpfully pointed out - Robert Novak was presumably not making this morning. If he was, I wonder if he too was under strict instructions to keep the yolks runny, and to position the eggs in the precise center of each slice of toast. The 5-year-old is a gourmand and a tyrant, equally exacting in her menus as she is stern in her conviction that mothers do not go to their offices on weekends.

This is especially galling as the little tyrant is named for a feminist icon, in a novel I clearly should have read more closely. Jo March represented many of our first encounters with a capable, independent-minded heroine. She stands alone in a field crowded with submissive women.

She isn't sitting around with dwarfs or sweeping floors. She is waiting neither for a fairy godmother nor a handsome prince. She makes choices - and seemingly perverse ones, too. Perhaps most significantly, she is the first girl in literature with a room of her own.

Or so I remember it.

Writing in the May l6 New Republic, Deborah Friedell offers a startling revelation. I have misread "Little Women." It is true that Jo is spunky, thirsty for adventure and grappling with her "disappointment in not being a boy." It's also true that - 15 years later - she has entirely reconciled herself to her disappointment. Having relinquished her dreams, she looks from stout husband to unruly children and pronounces herself happier than she has ever been.

She is philosophical about her early ambition: "the life I wanted then seems selfish, lonely and cold to me now." One day she may well write a good book - as indeed she will, in a sequel - but she has no qualms. Nor does she care that she has kissed the tenure track goodbye.

How could I have got this so entirely wrong? It's like holding up Emma Bovary as an emblem of marital bliss. In part I have conflated the Jo of "Little Women" with the Jo of the sequels. And in part I've had help from Hollywood, which has filmed "Little Women" three times, and three times blessed Jo with both career and children.

Friedell feels that Alcott was not so much swayed by market pressures as she was eager to spare Jo her own fate. She lent her heroine the domestic bliss she would have preferred. (She also allows Jo the luxury of not working, something she could never afford.) So it was that from the proto-feminist, the single woman who put in 14-hour days at her desk, supported her extended family, and died of overwork, we got Rapunzel redux.

Two volumes later Jo indeed finds work she loves, and success, and money to spare. But the realization of her "wildest and most cherished dream" comes at a price. It is exhausting, and a strain on the domestic front. The feather duster brings more satisfaction than the fan mail. Alcott's message is loud and clear. Evidently it does not in fact require testosterone to deliver an opinion.

It helps, though. "First of all," resumed my husband, swabbing the counter, "two parents have to know how to make breakfast." Yes, and 75 percent of male executives have non-working wives. Seventy-four percent of female executives have working husbands. Guess who's making breakfast? "And," he continued, "the women who manage well will be the ones whose fathers listened to them."

I suspect he's reading this stuff while I'm wielding the feather duster. But the research bears him out. Mr. Alcott was a case in point. John Munder Ross, clinical professor of medical psychology at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, is among those who have argued that for the Jos in this world to manage work and love, they need fathers who teach them to think - and to think that they deserve to marry their equals. Those men are as crucial to a girl's development, Ross holds, as the frantic mother who brings in a paycheck.

It could well be the route to the Hollywood version of "Little Women." Happy Father's Day.

Coincidentally, thanks to a mention of Rainbow Tour last week by folk, I've been listening to Evita for the last few days - it's a show I first saw when I was 11, but didn't listen to much until I was around 15 or 16 - not sure why I picked it up again then, but I did.

It's probably weird to say that I "identified" with Evita as a character (ie not the real life person) but in a roundabout way, I sort of did, especially parts of High Flying, Adored - "a shame you did it all at twenty-six..." At sixteen, and at eighteen, and at twenty two, I was certainly on my way to something resembling that. I was the first intern hired at CNBC, I covered the Supreme Court with Chris Gordon for CBS in Washington, DC, I had a standing offer to produce at Mtv when I was in college, but I'd have to drop out of school to take it. But part of me knew I didn't really want to give up ordinariness for that sort of presence of lifestyle, and I've never once regretted the married-with-children track; while I have some bad moments with the very busy, very active, very strong boys, I truly, truly love my life.

So this opinion piece in the Times made me think, did I take the Jo track? In ten years, I very well may return to some form of journalism - perhaps what I do online with TLC and FA are more tightly tied to the work I used to do for TheKnot than may be obvious at first glance? Does that mean that I should write, now:

[Heidi] has entirely reconciled herself to her disappointment. Having relinquished her dreams, she looks from stout husband to unruly children and pronounces herself happier than she has ever been.

She is philosophical about her early ambition: "the life I wanted then seems selfish, lonely and cold to me now." One day she may well write a good book - as indeed she will, in a sequel - but she has no qualms. Nor does she care that she has kissed the tenure track goodbye.

No qualms. I don't feel any. I don't think I have any, regarding the decision my husband and I made seven years ago to start having kids. But if I really, truly, absolutely have none, then why have I been so focused on making this post?


[not friendslocked but anonymous posts will be screened]


ETA: I realised after the fact why this has been on my mind over the weekend. It's because four years ago, when I had one child and was working full time, my husband came down with menengitis the week after I'd been given a talking-to by my department-head, Rich. While he was fine wiht my hours, the firm was concerned that I wasn't billing enough, and the fact that in the previous month, my sister had gotten married, so I'd taken a few vacation days, and the fact that only a few weeks before, the co-head of my department had been killed in a single-engine plane crash and our San Jose office had been closed, didn't hold any sway with them. So with my husband in the hospital, I felt obligated to still show up for work every day, and be in the office on the weekend, and just be glad that my mother in law could come into town to be at the hospital with Aaron and my nanny and sister were around to spend extra time with Harry.

And that, both at the time and in retrospect to a larger degree, were the reasons why I decided to stop with the full-time working, and move to a schedule that was more reasonable for - well, I won't say for a parent, because I won't generalize here. It was more reasonable for me.

I know there are women who can do both - the full time job and the 1, 2 or 3 little kids. I also know that the circumstances of the time dictated that I was not going to be one of them, at least for now.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

There was an article years ago in GQ that I saved because I really liked what it had to say. It was written by a man but really talked about men and women. The article was about Hollywood movies and how they depicted adulthood throughout the years, and how earlier movies did adulthood more justice.

The point, and here's where it connects with your article, was that he felt that movies in, say, the 50s, no matter how conformist they were, seemed very aware of the fact that being an adult was about choices. And choices are dangerous. You can't choose one without losing the other, and it's not a bad thing to think about what you've lost. Hollywood nowadays (both reflecting how we think and telling us what to think, in a way) seems to insist on that one picture of Jo as finding her old ambitions cold and empty. As if it's not enough to not regret the life you chose, you have to also see your other choice as a very bad idea, like it's a relief you chose the right one. And according to Hollywood these days, the right choice is always the stout husband and unruly kids, because the other life is always cold and selfish and lonely. Though at the same time there are people often trying to make it seem that choosing to have a family is just as bad. You've "given up" your dreams.

In reality, I don't think it's that simple. Really, though, I think everybody's life is at least in part what they choose because it's best for them. Being single myself I probably know more single people who didn't choose a family and they don't regret it either. They find warm relationships just as people with families find ways to express themselves and be creative. You don't give up one impulse just because the other impulse is the dominant one in your life. Sure Alcott may have written about a big family for Jo that she wanted for herself, but so do many stay-at-home moms like to read and dream about independent career women.

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

Much better put than what I said. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Ironically, here's where I'm going to correct my typo:

As if it's not enough to not regret the life you chose, you have to also see your other choice as a very bad idea,

Should read: As if it's not enough to *not regret* the life you chose...

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

Being just at the beginning of that time full of the door-closing, window-opening decisions, I don't know whether I have a place to speak here, but...

I imagine having children someday and I have to know that in order for me to do that, my hopes and goals will change and grow conducive to that instead of remaining the ones I've set so far in which I am solitary in my pursuit.

You want readers' thoughts on your reasons for making this post? I don't think it's a regretful post; you seem satisfied with where your decisions have taken you in life. I think that we all wonder, "Would I be as satisfied if I had 'stuck to my guns?'" when we look back. But I think that while hindsight puts things into sharper focus, it also can take away the softer edges- the little acquiesces we make for the sake of happiness, progress, what-have-you- which we later forget long after arriving at decisions we might end up viewing as sacrificial or questionable or regrettable.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

Because just because you're happy doesn't mean you can't have regrets or other wishes, too?

I'm perched on the very beginning of the path that you took- putting my career aside to raise kids. And even though I know I'm doing the right thing for me and my family, it's HARD some days.

For all that I read Ayn Rand, I've never believed that there's only one thing in life that a person can be happy doing. But despite Rand's one-track-mind philosophy, there was a quote from Atlas Shrugged that I liked that went along the lines "I've always been short on time in my life, never on things to use it for." (I'm way off, but that's the gist of it.)

Breaking womens' duties down into an "either-or" situation kind of sucks, for more reasons than one. The women who work feel guilty for putting their kids in daycare and are sometimes viewed as "lesser mothers", and the women who do the stay at home thing feel confined and are sometimes viewed as "lesser women", especially if they had a career beforehand that they gave up. And yet, as I think a lot of people know, the choice isn't so black and white, because the woman who works outside the home truly wants to be a good mother, and the woman who stays at home has the interests and the strengths for a career. We want it all, and no matter what they say, WE CAN'T HAVE IT, simply because we can't be in two places at once. We as a gender can both work outside the home and be stay-at-home moms, but we as individuals cannot.

But the decision to take one path doesn't mean that the other isn't appealing, or that the other doesn't have its benefits. And times of regret or wishing that we could have something else or more than what we have are normal. Consider a person without kids in a career, but that has more than one interest. I mean, I'd love to write, but here I am in science. I'm glad I made the choices I did, but that doesn't mean I don't want the other choices, too.

I think the article yoy posted is frustrating in that it turns the work outside/stay at home dilemma into an either-or, without acknowledging how hard it can be for a woman to make that decision, or that it IS a hugely personal decision dependent on many factors, from what kind of job the woman does, what her husband does, is part time work possible, etc. The article is "work and be free, or stay home and be subservient." It's not quite couched in those words, but the undercurrent does equate staying home to being all those things women tried to break out of... and that's galling to any woman who makes the choice to stay at home. There's an inherent assumption in that article that a career is superior, or that only a paying career can be fulfilling, but because it's not on the surface, it doesn't ring the alarms right away.

What we want at 15 is rarely the same as what we want at 30, because when we're 15 our happiness is depenedent upon ourselves, and ourselves only. Once we marry and children become a real possibility, we re-evaluate the situation, and we consider different angles and different aspects of a career vs. home. So the real question is... did JO even take the Jo track? Or did she reevaluate what she wanted from life when she was presented with new data? When Jo was 15, she had no boyfriend, no love of her life, and kids were far in the future. She did travel, she did work, and she did write, but when she does finally fall in love, her life does change because she wants it to change. I haven't read the sequels, but Professor Baehr never came across as heavy-handed or forbidding. In fact, in Little Women he was very encouraging and proud of Jo's writing (well, proud of certain aspects of it ;) ) He does not force her to change her dreams; Jo's dreams change because what Jo wants and how Jo sees her life changes.

So in summary, I think the article is full of bull ;)

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

What we want at 15 is rarely the same as what we want at 30, because when we're 15 our happiness is depenedent upon ourselves, and ourselves only.

I think that's very, very it. Also, I think in my case, I made the switch to part time three months after 9.11, when my ickle baby Harry was in preschool and not long after my husband had been hospitalized for menengitis (as per what I just edited into the main post) and I didn't want to be forced & obligated to be far away from either of them for extended periods of time. It's a change in perspective, but that's all it is. A change. Not a bout of deliberate and horrific self-denial.

[selinakyle47.livejournal.com]

I'm giving up on the tenure track; or at the very least, getting accustomed to the idea that it will be very difficult to get back on it after taking time off to raise children. Yeah, it's a waste of a Ph.D. (as I've been told) but this is what's best for our family.

I guess I just don't believe anymore that you can have it both, career and family.

[friede.livejournal.com]

I am the product of several influences along those lines:

1. My dad, who says "we all make choices"
2. My mother, from whom "stay at home" is only mildly accurate in any sense.
3. My godfather, who has found happiness and meaning in high school teaching.
4. My undergraduate mentor, tenured and and a beneficiary of the 1960s
5. My other undergrad advisor and my current advisor, women who have both skyrocketed up the food chain at an unprecedented rate.
6. My supervisors and doctoral mentors, a tenured married couple expecting their second child, and who balance their professional lives happily in the middle of the country.

I have seen good, meaningful lives created from a variety of choices, and at this point at least, I don't fret that one or another will be "better" -- just different. But then, I'm weird.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

No matter what you do, there will always be regrets, and it's perfectly natural to own up to them.

I love(d) travelling to give talks and attend conferences - which will be much more difficult very soon. I also really like peace and quiet. Well, tough, as a good kick in my belly just informed me.

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

Interesting to myself because my wife is due with our first in December. I guess that is why Feminism (as it's labeled) can be a blessing and a curse. It gives women the choice to be one (housewife/mother), the other (career oriented), or both, but it also places the responsibility of that choice squarely on their shoulders. If society made the choice, there wouldn't be the 'guilt' of wondering whether one made the personally correct one, but there also wouldn't be the joy at the freedom to make the choice. Do we have regrets or wonder how our live's might have changed if we had chosen differently? Over our live's, during a period of time, or at one moment? Of course...we're human.

Oh... "Evidently it does not in fact require testosterone to deliver an opinion."

Of course it does!!! ;)

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

... John Munder Ross, clinical professor of medical psychology at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, is among those who have argued that for the Jos in this world to manage work and love, they need fathers who teach them to think - and to think that they deserve to marry their equals. Those men are as crucial to a girl's development, Ross holds, as the frantic mother who brings in a paycheck.

Great quote. I'm lucky that I and my 6 sisters had that kind of dad. I have no idea where HE got those ideas (possibly from my mother!!). Regardless, we were and still are lucky to have him as our father. We never heard a word from him OR our mother about "You can't do this because you're a girl" or any crap like that. Plus they were great examples of a marriage that was realistic, rather than idyllic (you know, not like in the movies ;)

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

I almost put this in a rather longwinded, drawn out response to someone else's comments here, but the truth of it is that I think that every woman has the right to figure all this out on her own and there's very little of it that can be learned from anything other than just doing your own time and living through it all. There's no truth like your own, etc.

But as for why you're making this post: I don't know a single woman who made this decision just one time. We seem to have to keep making it over and over again, every time one of the kids goes through a development spurt or reaches a milestone. And here you are, settled in with Cate now, getting used to your life with three children, and because you are you :D you're looking to see what else you can fit in and where it would go and how it all would work. No wonder, then, that this post was important to you.

Also, there is something glorious and wonderful about realizing that however much you might like newborns, you are never doing that again. Your family is complete - this is your default configuration for many years to come. After I had A I went into hardcore life planning mode, because even through there were lots of rearing years to go, the bearing years were behind me. I found I could conceptualize our future much easier once I no longer had to make "oh, and somewhere in there have another baby" concessions.

[likebunnies.livejournal.com]

I couldn't even do a full time job with one kid! I couldn't even do a part time job with one kid! He is the most important thing so this is my job for now, I guess. There are days I sit and cry and wonder what might have been if I had done everything I once wanted to do when I was in college but most of that would have required that there be no Damien and I can't live with that thought for long.

Heidi, I admire you for everything you have done and are doing. I wish I had the motivation and energy to do half of what you do. *hugs*

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

ICON LOVE.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

It sounds to me like you're wondering what might have been, and that's normal. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like had I married, had kids, etc. I know myself well enough to know that if I'd chosen that route, I don't think I'd be very happy. You, on the other hand, sound happy with your choices, which seem like the absolutely right ones for you. Looking back and reflecting seems to be human nature.

[cleverthylacine]

Yup :D

[cleverthylacine]

I know why I thought of Jo as I did; I never read the sequels. I'm still not sure I ever will. I got as far as Mr Bhaer criticising Jo for writing fantastical stories with villainny in them, and that was as far as I wanted to go. I would never give that up, nor listen to any voice which said I should.

[melieltathariel.livejournal.com]

Well, because it's easier to analyze looking backwards than forwards, I have to consider this in terms of my mom and my growing up. My mom is an infectious disease doctor; my toddler years were spent in daycare and going with my dad to bring her Chinese takeout in the middle of the night during her residency. She wasn't a PTA mom; she didn't bake thousands of cookies every day. But she always spent time with me. She is still easy for me to talk to, and like a friend to me. (She's even written fic!) And thus, I think, I've grown up believing that time is entirely manageable. I have never found any problem in doing lots of work quickly but completely, spending time with friends and family, and still having time to read. So I'm in the camp that says, yes, you can choose absolutely any path you want, but if you're willing to work quite hard, you may not have to give anything up.
I applaud and respect your choice, and the choice of anyone who has made a careful decision.

[lilac-bearry.livejournal.com]

You have to do what's right for you and your family. No one can dictate that to you. That is real freedom.

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

I never really understood the sequels to Little Women, Jo especially seemed to lose the independent spirit that made her the vibrant character, who wanted to achieve her dreams of writing and being taken seriously. (But then again I couldn't believe Laurie married Amy, as I found her just so infuriatingly pathetic and vacuous) For me the Jo-family set up was totally unconvincing, and it wasn't the fact that she gave up her career which confused me, rather that I didn't see why she did.

Like a lot of women I do want to have a family at some point, but at 20, its not a priority for me, in many ways I'm happier being alone, and cherishing my self-sufficiency for as long as possible. I have a few friends at uni who all just want to graduate, get married and have lots of kiddies, which I find odd, surely there can be more to life than just family. That being said, I have so much respect for mothers, whether stayathomes or career-women. My mum waited until she was in her thirties to get married and have me and my sister, and when she did she continued working part-time in nursing. For most of our time in primary school she would work night-shifts, come back from work, get us up and ready for school, make packed lunches, take us into school, then get as much sleep as she could before it was time to pick us up again. I can't imagine having the strength to do that, and how she wasn't exhausted the whole time, but always had time to think up fun things to do, cook amazing dinners, and general running of the house. Then she decided to do a degree! And a masters after that. My mum is an inspiration (this week she's doing a sponsored walk along the length of Hadrian's Wall, about 70 miles to raise money for the neonatal unit she works in!) I'm also sure she couldn't have done it without the love and support of my dad, who does his share of the cleaning, hoovering is one of his specialities! Being a bit of a bachelor when they got married he was used to looking after himself, so does his own washing and ironing, and cooks dinner half the week, and took my sister and I on copious trips to the park, and into school with him when we had odd days off school. I have so much respect for parents.