Apt. 11D

Sympathy for the SAHM

Why do women stay at home with their kids? Because the work world is crazy. 

From Judith Shulevitz: 

To understand why female lawyers, doctors, bankers, academics, high-tech executives and other, often expensively pedigreed, professionals quit work to stay home, you need not search their souls for ambivalence or nostalgia. In fact, searching their souls guarantees that you won’t get the story, because it’s not to be found in individual decisions and personal stories, which are always complicated and hard to parse, but in the structural realities of the American workplace. And by this I don’t just mean the family-unfriendly policies of the kind Marissa Mayer is accused of advancing—though refusing to let workers telecommute doesn’t help, and let’s not even talk about how few American companies have on-site child care or adequate parental leave. I mean that among the professional and managerial classes, success at work requires more hours in the office, more hours on the computer at home, more trips out of town, and a much less predictable schedule than it did in Betty Friedan’s day. The life of a Joan or a Peggy at an advertising agency looks almost easy by comparison.

The New "New Republic"

The New Republic changed a lot in the past year, under its new ownership by Chris Hughes, one of Facebook's Mega-Rich. The online format is hot. And I enjoy the articles. I used to rarely read the New Republic, even though we have a print subscription. Steve was the primary reader. But now, thanks to its redesign and twitter friendly topics, I check out an article or two per day. I made a mental note last week to start sending them pitches for articles. 

Over the weekend, there was a scuffle about its new direction. They fired a long time writer, who wasn't too pleased. Reason has more about the direction of the magazine under Hughes. 

Cleaning the House Wars

Last week, the chattering class moved on from talking about Sandberg and leaning in to talking about division of house cleaning chores. (See Jessica Grose, Jonathan Chait, and Stella Bugbee.) I didn't weigh in, because we've dealt with that topic so many times on this blog. A sloppy search of my archives pulled up dozens of posts. However, I've been getting nudged to write a post about it, so here goes...

Having a tidy house isn't totally worthless as Bugbee makes out. If the kids have clean socks in a designated drawer, it is easier to get out them of the house in the morning. It's easier to throw some waffles in the toaster, if the counter isn't strewn with the remains of the previous night's dinner party. There are obvious benefits from having the cabinet under the sink stocked with rolls of toilet paper. 

I speak from experience here, because right now Jonah's clean clothes are stacked in front of his dresser and are not actually in his drawers. The kitchen counters are piled high with a mix of clean and unclean platters and bowls from last night's dinner party. And the upstairs bathroom does not have any toilet paper. 

Having a clean house is a nice thing. But making it clean is super boring, and in our spoiled Western world, we have so many better things to do with our time. 

Steve and I used to quarrel more about the housework than we do now. In some ways, quarreling over housework is a young person problem. By the time that you've been married for a million years, an equilibrium develops and standards change. I have learned to ignore the chaos on the top of Steve's night stand and desk. And he's recognized that it's actually gross to have a kitchen so dirty that you can see a dead cockroach in the digital display of the microwave. 

Like Chait, I do more of the housework, because I'm home. But I do not accept that housecleaning is my job. I do more, but I consider it a temporary situation and a low priority task. I got a headpiece for the phone, so I tidy up, while chatting with my mom. I watch dumb TV shows, during those rare moments when I try to squeeze the mountain of folded laundry into our cramped, hand-me down, paint-encrusted dressers. (I do think that if we ever invest money in proper furniture, the house will be tidier.)

When Steve's home, he does a fair share of a certain type of housework. During the week, he cleans up after dinner and throws in one load of laundry. As long as we have a mutually agreed upon priority list for the weekend, we're conflict-free. It would be nice if there was some recognition that the workload for the house was not evenly distributed, but we'll let that one go for the moment. He does many chores around the house that I don't touch, including the bill paying. 

Not only is housecleaning is a worthless task, but quarreling about the housework is also a complete waste of time. After fifteen years of marriage, we have nearly reached an equilibrium point. It took a long time for each of us to make adjustments in expectations and to arrive at certain patterns. I'm glad we're at this point, because there are so many better things to do with your time. Keeping score about the house cleaning is just as boring as putting away the platters from the dinner party and keeping the bathroom stocked with toilet paper. 

Eating Dinner With Art and Newspapers

I've been playing around with my old oil paint supplies and making some DIY abstract paintings. It takes a couple of days to get it right, so we had to eat dinner in the midst of my mess this week. Ian was a bit annoyed and insisted on putting a placemat over the newsprint. The rest of us liked it, because we could read while eating dinner. 

Dumb Assed Articles About Women

There is some dumb shit written about women in the press, and then there is the Pulitzer Prize of dumb shit. Who should get that award? Some candidates: 

Women Losing Objects Up Their Vaginas: An Online Literature Review

Why Some Women Choose to Eat Their Placentas 

(More to come. Will accept nominations from the comment gallery. )

Activites For Special Needs Kids

Ian's disabilities became obvious when he was about 2-1/2. He'll be 11 next month, so a little math here... I've been trying to find the right place for Ian both academically and socially for nearly nine years. And I'm a little burned out. 

His perky new teacher who is straight out of college tells me that I should be reviewing Ian's homework with him every evening, instead of letting him work independently. (Can I tell you how much fun it is to get a parenting lecture from a 21-year old?) Uh, yeah, no. Instead, I'm researching appropriate summer camps and after school activities. 

It's not easy to find the right programs for Ian. It's hard to find any activities that are geared to special ed kids. Often it involves a lot of driving and networking and phone calls. The fact that Ian is cognitively strong, but has a language disability, makes it even trickier. 

It's hard to find the right activities that are geared to his specific type of disability. Some programs are aimed at kids who are extremely disabled and are much older. A few years ago, I enrolled Ian in an excercise program, and those huge kids - babies with the bodies of adults - were a little scary for Ian. One kid pinched him and he cried. Ian doesn't want to deal with kids who aren't cognitively at his level. Other programs are aimed at kids who have ADHD, who fly around the room, and the adults don't know how to talk to someone with a language disorder. Even among disabled kids, Ian is very unusual. 

My desk is covered with applications and brochures right now. Time to make the donuts. 

Spreadin' Love 542

Awesome twitter snark (a real artform) about Hillary's announcement that she's pro-gay marriage. 

My latest radio interview on Media Matters.   Download Laura McKenna. 

Yay. The New York Times has a special museum section this week. Check out the article and slide show about photography exhibits. 

Fantastic article about working-class men in the new economy. 

Lower Teaching Loads and College Tuition

A new report by the Education Sector finds that the rise of college in tuition is related to a decline in faculty teaching loads. 

Not sure about that. Adjunct professors, who have made up the teaching gap, are pretty cheap. 

The Joys of Romance Novels

Last year, I went though a jag of reading romance novels. I wrote about it on the blog and at the Atlantic. 

I haven't dipped back into that genre of books in a while. I went through a huge YA book orge this winter. Last week, I reread Angela's Ashes: A Memoir. Right now, I'm reading Defending Jacob (loving it and will write about it when I'm done). 

The Atlantic has a really nice article about romance novels. Thought I should pass it along. 

Teenagers! Ugh!

Jonah transformed into a teenager somehow in one snowy week in February. It wasn't a gradual change in personality. It was an abrupt change. One day he was a kid, and the next day he was an asshole.

His body hasn't caught up, yet. His eyebrows are darker, but his voice hasn't changed and his shoulders haven't grown. Right now, it's mostly about his personality. I'm slowly learning how to parent a teenager, but it's like learning a whole new language. I still don't have the hang of it, yet.

Last night, as I drove him home from soccer practice, I asked him how it went. He replied, "Terrible."

I said, "Terrible? Oh sweetie, what happened?" I was alarmed. Did he blow a goal? Did the other kids tease him? Would this put him into a funk for five days?

"Mom, it went fine. I got two goals," he said with an amused voice in the back seat.

Apparently, "terrible" really means "great" and "I really don't want to talk about it with you, because you're a grown up." Except when "terrible" really means "terrible" and "I really don't want to talk about it with you, because you're a grown up." There are many subtlies with the word "terrible" and I haven't yet figured out when "terrible" means "great" or "really terrible." 

He announced that he had a lot of homework, when he came home. So, I told him that he better get to it and walked away to deal with other matters. I found him at 4:00 in front of the TV watching a soccer match and texting on his phone. I said, "Jonah! I thought you had a lot of homework. Why aren't you doing it?" 

"I will!"

Okay, so let me translate "I will" for you. "I will" means "I will do it at some indeterminate point in the future, which might be never." 

He doesn't want me to tell him to do things, but he still doesn't want to assume the responsibility to do things on his own and still expects me to nag him to do things. 

Last month, I went to a town function where there were a lot of women with younger children. They jabbered away about nap times and nursery school options and playdates. And I had nothing to contribute to the conversation. I felt really old. Like all that was another life time away. I'm dealing with "I will" and "terrible" and long lectures about Internet security. 

Last week, there was a minor town scandal, because some high school girls took naked pictures of themselves and sent them to boys via Snapchat, the website that enables people to send pictures that are immediately deleted after ten seconds. Well, the boys quickly captured the naked pictures using a screen capture function on their phones and then sent the pictures to everyone in the high school. The school district freaked out, because photos of underaged girls is considered child pornography. If those photographs were distributed through district e-mails, they would be liable. The media was alerted, and there was a big circus outside the high school. 

So, this meant that we had to have a long chat with Jonah about what he should do, if someone sends him an inappropriate photo and the legal ramifications of all that. I immediately went onto Instagram to see what he was posting. Artsy selfies. Whew. 

I will get the hang of this. I will. But I mean "I will" in the Jonah sense, which is "I will at some indeterminate point in the future, which might be never."