11D

Advice For a New Mom

Lisa Belkin posts a letter from a woman who is planning on either working part-time or quitting all together now that she has a newborn. The woman is surprised at herself for making this decision. Until now, she had been devoted to her work and been even contemptuous of SAHMs. Belkin asks the readers for advice for this woman.

I'm curious what comments she'll receive. My prediction is that nearly all of the commenters will tell the women to do whatever they did. The parents that stayed at home will say it is the best, while the pay-check parents will tell her that paid employment is the best. And all the childless people will be completely clueless.

Political Wives: What Do They Get Out It?

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to a Double X post, which says that Jenny Sanford's efforts to raise her kids and support her husband's career was mis-directed energy. Sanford is apparently an extremely bright woman who had a major job in finance before she started her family. Coates says there has to be something more to Sanford's decisions than simply being a doormat.

Coates isn't buying the simplistic and judgmental reasoning of Double X, but he still doesn't understand Sanford and others. He asks,

My question is why would a woman so willingly throw herself into her husband's life work? There must have been some sort of light there, something that she got out of it. I don't say that to be caustic, or mean. But the narrative of put-upon housewife always leaves me unsatisfied, because while it says a lot about the husband, his proclivities, and his selfishness, it really says nothing about the wife. Who is she? Why would she enter into such an arrangement? What is the trade-off? Where is her agency in it all?

I don't know Jenny, but I can throw out some guesses on why she quit her job and supported his career.

She probably hated her job. I know, who would believe it? Most people hate their jobs and would quit as soon as the balls fell the right way on Lotto. Finance jobs, in particular, aren't that fun. People do it for the money and quit as soon as they feel that they have enough money. Of course, having enough money varies from person to person. When Steve goes to work, he sometimes hears the stock brokers puking in the bathroom from the stress. Steve would quit his job the moment I made enough money to cover the mortgage. For us, enough money = paying the mortgage.

She probably loved her kids and wanted to raise them herself. She has four young boys. I bet that they had a nanny, but still, managing four kids is a lot of work.

He probably worked 16 hour days and traveled a lot. Jobs in finance are 12 hour jobs. I'm sure she thought it would be nice if her kids saw one parent once in a while.

High end jobs assume that there is a stay at home parent. Steve can never take off for sick days or parent-teacher conferences or for school holidays. They assume that I'll take care of it. It is assumed that he can work after hours whenever he is needed. He came home at 9:00 last night without worrying about the babysitter or the daycare. It is highly annoying that his job makes that assumption, but that's a rant for another day.

But political jobs are even weirder. Not only do they assume that there's a full time parent at home, but they also expect that the spouse will show up at events and give speeches. People give Michelle Obama a hard time about quitting her job, but as far as I can tell, she's working a lot. She's in front of the camera every day giving speeches and reading to school kids. That looks like a job to me. Political office is the only job that employs the whole family.

Also, Jenny probably believed in her husband's political message. She ran his political campaign because she liked his platform. Whatever.

Marriages involve trust and compromises. The Sanfords probably made a series of decisions based on who loved their career more, who really wanted to care for the kids, and a host of other factors. She probably didn't look at her role as mom and political wife as a sacrifice. Maybe that was an error, but if a marriage is going to work, you have to somewhat trust the other person.

UPDATE: BitchPhD has a good response.

Who Gets the Kids?

I admit to watching a lot of coverage of Michael Jackson's death. Though his songs were always in the background when I was growing up, I was never a huge fan. So, I'm skipping all the life retrospectives and zeroing in on the sycophants drugging him up and his stomach pumpings.

The child custody angle led to some discussions among friends this weekend. All of them had worries about who would get their kids, if they should push off unexpectedly. Which relatives would be able to handle a disruption in their lives? Who would gladly welcome new kids, and who would perceive it as a burden? One friend was bypassing all the relatives, because they were either crazy, sick, or too involved in sports. Our solution is to be heavily insured; enough money and even the most rigid relative will loosen up. 

Keys Issues in Politics and Parenthood?

I'm going to guestblog at Feministe in September. I am going to concentrate on the intersection of parenthood and politics. It will be fun to take our discussions here and bring them to a new audience. I have a few ideas about what I'll write about there, but I would like to get input from you all. What policies and reforms do you think would help you the most?

Rationalizing the Divorce

Call me old fashioned, but I think that if you are having an affair with the contractor, the proper way to deal with it is to be discreet, but joyful. I'm thinking Mrs. Robinson. Have a smoke and scotch and a romp in the hay.  Sandra Tsing Loh takes another path. She goes for open and bitter. She breaks up her marriage and then writes a magazine article about why people weren't really meant to be married. Hello! Creditability problems here!

Loh explains that she had an affair, which ended their marriage. However, people weren't really meant to be married for so long. Her kids wouldn't really miss having both parents at home anyway. Loh is really an explorer personality type. Her husband and her friends' husbands weren't so great in the sack. And the husbands are kind of girlie in the way they help out around the house. Why should a marriage be work? She fishes around for any explanation that will save her.

This article is an extended rationalization for why Loh wrecked her marriage. Loh comes off as angry, mean, and desperate. I find it astounding that the Atlantic published it.

Parenting as a Social Justice Issue

I was watching the Martha Stewart show at the gym this morning. She was making pizzas with Jennifer Gardner today. My pizzas have been too soggy on the bottom lately, so I was interested to see how Martha did it.

Gardner said that she was supporting a charity in West Virginia that teaches new moms parenting skills. Her discussion of this organization reminded me of a fabulous article in the New Yorker by Katherine Boo describing a similar initiative in LA. I use that article in my public policy class every year.

I also learned from the show that I really need to get a paddle to slide my pizza onto the pizza stone.

Daycare Ratios

My babysitter stayed for dinner last night, because she has a weakness for the mashed potatoes from Boston Market. During the meal, she talked about her experience working for a major daycare chain in New Jersey. She said that she was placed in a room with 10 two years olds by herself for the whole day. 1:10 is the ratio mandated by NJ's licensing standards.

However, the babysitter said that ten two-year olds is too much for one person. She said that all she could manage was changing diapers, feeding them meals, and taking them out to the playground. She spent so much time in the bathroom changing diapers that she was unable to monitor the kids left in the classroom. Some kids would be scaling the bookshelves, when she was in the bathroom and that she couldn't console the kids who cried. She was utterly burnt out by the end of the day and depressed from the isolation.

Someone once asked me what bad childcare looked like. Exhibit A.

UPDATE: Here's the breakdown by state of daycare ratios. Turns out NJ is one of the worst. It is tied with Kentucky.

Breastfeeding is Best?

Yesterday's discussion about gender equity and childcare spun off into an interesting discussion both here and Crooked Timber. I thought I would sum up the arguments and start a new thread on this topic.

We here at 11D are firmly committed to the notion that childcare should be, in an ideal world, a 50/50 proposition. Men and women should equally split the responsibilities for the kids, because it is good for both parents, good for the kids, and the only way that women will have the time and the energy to compete in the professional arena.

What does the choice to breastfeed do towards achieving that goal?

Siobhan pointed us to an article in Atlantic Monthly by Hanna Rosin that points out that the research that supports the notion that breastfeeding makes kids smarter and healthier is highly flawed. The benefits are marginal, and it is difficult to tease out the data from socio-economic variables and other factors. She questions the huge advantages of breast feeding the babies.

And when I look around my daughter’s second-grade class, I can’t seem to pick out the unfortunate ones: “Oh, poor little Sophie, whose mother couldn’t breast-feed. What dim eyes she has. What a sickly pallor. And already sprouting acne!”

All that work for a questionable pay-off results in a huge cost to women. Rosen writes, "This is why, when people say that breast-feeding is “free,” I want to hit them with a two-by-four. It’s only free if a woman’s time is worth nothing."

Breast feeding has a huge impact on gender equity. Even if you make deals, like he deals with the output, while she deals with the input, things are still off. Every time that baby cries, people declare "he wants the boob" and that kid is in your lap. Breastfeeding is time consuming, painful, and dads lose out on the bonding process.

I would be hesitant to completely disregard the benefits of breastfeeding. When it comes to your kids, I think it is best to hedge your bets. But why can't there be a middle ground? Why do we have to go to extremes in these matters?

Sometimes breast feeding is easier. Sometimes bottle feeding is easier. It is possible to do both. That nipple confusion stuff is bullshit. When our kids were born, they were primarily breast fed except for the 3:00am feeding. Steve administered that feeding with formula. He got to bond and I got to sleep. Pumping is a Middle Age torture device, and after one tearful attempt, I refused to do it. Then we gradually increased formula until month six or seven when we went entirely to formula. 

Those first few years are overwhelming. We're thrown into a world of guilt and extremism. The books present a one-dimensional uber-mom that we're all supposed to aspire to, and they fail to prepare us for the realities of combining childcare with other goals like work and shared parenting. And as Harry and others say, they don't prepare us for the realities of C-sections and kids who won't breastfeed and sickly babies.

On the other hand, there's the equally ridiculous backlash literature, which states that kids are resilient and actively encourages us to neglect our kids to pursue our own goals. 

There needs to be a middle ground, people. We need to do the right things for our kids, while dividing up the labor correctly and having a life outside the home. One good thing about getting past the baby stage is that you stop reading those books. There are still many pressures that wreck havoc with achieving a good balance, but thankfully the breast police have checked out. 

UPDATE: Profgrrrrl shares the really lovely part about breastfeeding. When it works out well, breast feeding is cozy and warm. And check out Wendy's excellent post. She thinks that women are encouraged to stop breastfeeding too quickly; she defends attachment parenting. Mamalooper thinks that the breast is best.

UPDATE 2: Here's Rosin on the Today Show.

UPDATE 3: Tim Burke writes, "What I really want is for us to get to a place where modest incremental benefits can be argued for using modest incremental rhetoric, where experts don’t feel the need for overcompensatory alarmism or feel they have to circle the wagons in order to get attention or bludgeon an uncooperative public into change."

Divisions of Labor

Harry writes about an article by Mary Ann Mason in the Chronicle.

Our study of faculty members at the University of California revealed that mothers, on average, worked 95 hours a week, with 43 percent of those hours devoted to child care and housework and the rest to professional activities. Fathers worked 80 hours a week, with only 31 percent devoted to their domestic duties.

Digital Moms

Dooce was on the Today Show this morning.