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Parenthood in the Workplace

February 18, 2010

Sunday’s NYT style section ran a really important piece on President Obama and how he doesn’t miss his daughter’s recitals, parent teacher conferences or any important events. As someone who spent my full-time working-motherhood career essentially doing my best to hide the fact that I was a parent, I loved reading this article.

My initial reaction to the piece was totally bratty – I thought – well shit, if the leader of the free world can make time to attend band recitals (is it me or has “American Pie” forever made band a dirty thing?) or parent-teacher conferences, then no parent can honestly be too busy or too important to miss these things. But it’s way more complicated than that – and the story did touch on that. Being that he is the President, Obama can do whatever the hell he wants – and the rest of us – well, we probably don’t have that kind of authority. The majority of working parents answer to someone and that someone might not be thrilled with an 11am band recital (ha ha – band camp).

Though I am home full-time now, I’m still pretty scarred from my experience working full-time and being a mom. Granted I know much of the experience has to do with where you work and who you work for – and it’s safe to say having been the only working mom in a senior level position – I was not in a family friendly environment. My experience was – everyone knew I had a baby and that was fine – it was nice to have pictures of her in my office – but beyond that – don’t mention it. Get to work, do your job, but if there’s a drama with the nanny or a sick kid or an unexpected anything – as well, life seems to be when you have kids, it’s certainly not a reason to miss a meeting. And please…..don’t tell us about it.

The thing is – do I necessarily think this is a bad thing? Not necessarily. You don’t need to have kids to have shit happen to you outside the office and I know this is a common complaint among people who don’t have children – they don’t get special exceptions, why should I? And I worked for someone who didn’t have children and wasn’t ever going to have children.

Would I have remained in the workforce if I’d been in a warmer environment? One that was more flexible and accommodating – probably.

So then should employers be more flexible towards working parents? Do parents deserve special exceptions because they do have greater responsibilities beyond the office?

And is the President paving the way? Unlike me, who used to try to sneak in side doors to hide just how late I was, Obama is completely out of the closet regarding his parenthood responsibilities. Will his priorities help force more changes in American business culture towards families?

The other important part of this article, in my all-important view, was the discussion of fatherhood and working. Apparently the President’s priorities are representative of a generational shift in how fathers view their role. I, for one, don’t see it. My dad worked like a crazy person but the man was at every painful band recital, he coached girls basketball (and yes, we usually were shooting for the wrong basket in 6th grade…he was most likely thinking “I left work for this shit?”), and I’m sure I hoped he would miss most parent-teacher conferences. So – I’m not sure whether my dad was an anomaly but I recall seeing my friends dads out there right along with him. So is this a convenient generational shift for the media or is it real? Cause I wouldn’t have married a man who doesn’t consider these things just as important as I do. Would you? I’m thinking there are probably some fathers who are still very involved and others who are less-so – just like in generations past.

Moving on, the piece cites a survey conducted by the Families and Work Institute. The survey reveals that men, more than women, feel caught between parenthood and working, revealing that 59% of men feel a work-life conflict.

WHAAAA

Ummm…….was this survey conducted in renown family friendly France where all the women were off on a year-long maternity leave when they participated?

Cause there’s no way this survey was conducted here in the States. I’m not challenging that 60% of fathers feel a work-life pull. What I’m actually LAUGHING about is that working fathers feel this pull more so than working moms.

Am I alone here people?

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Husbands, Life with 2 kids, Motherhood, Work

Sanity Spared

January 26, 2010

I have three sisters. We all are roughly three years apart. This age separation between us worked – it worked for us as sisters (as if we had a choice) and it worked for my parents. According to my mom, it made raising four children as manageable as one might think it could ever be – to have us spaced out from 0 to 9 years old when my youngest sister was born. I think this line of thinking just sort of seeped into me over time, I grew to understand this age spacing as the ideal way to have subsequent children.

Now that I have two children, instead of think about having them and rationalize why timing them a certain number of years apart is ideal, I could spend all day ticking off pros and cons to closer together or more spread apart. But what good is that – they are what they are – which is 4 years old and 14 months. My children are exactly 3 years and 10 days apart in age.

What I’ve discovered is one is physically demanding and the other is mentally demanding. Currently I am finding the physically demanding one to be the more high maintenace. I don’t love this phase of constant roaming, getting into everything, having no understanding of consequences or danger. And DD2 is particularly curious and adventurous -100 fold more so than DD1 ever has been. Either that or I just don’t remember DD1 when she was 14 months because it feels like 100 years ago already.

So who would have thought that one simple plastic contraption would be my sanity saver? C’est vrai. A gate has come to change my life. Because I birthed the next adventurer to hike Mt. Everest, we obviously had a gate up at the stairs months ago. But maybe sleep deprivation and general foggy thinking got in the way from DH and I realizing that we needed to add a gate to the playroom door. How ingeniuos! Trap the children into one room – where they are safe – I can see and hear them – but they can’t get out. A veritable prison in my own home!!!

Now don’t think adding the gate transformed into the miracle play time with both children happily packing off to the playroom. Making it work evolved into an art form with missteps along the way.

As we all know, introducing change to a preschooler is not accepted with welcoming open arms. So we got off to a rocky start, DD1 disdainfully glaring at me as I begged her and promised infinite wealth and opportunities for treats, if she would just go into playroom with her sister and stay in there for a few minutes and not open the gate and let her sister out. I hope I never said, way back when I was naïve and clueless, that I wouldn’t bribe my children. Cause that’s my MO around these parts. DD1 eventually acquiesed once she secured the volume of spicy chips and popsicles she deemed acceptable for playing along with this new rule.

A few days passed and the arguing and bribery started to wane…..a few times a day (read: when I am struggling to get breakfast or dinner on the table without DD2 climbing into something and ending up in the ER) I was able to coax the 2 of them into the playroom and keep the gate closed.

It’s an art form really.

Sure, there’s a specific room dedicated to all their toys but DD2 won’t stay in there alone and DD1 prefers to empty out her toys de jour from the playroom into the living room. Just coercing them to go into the room and stay there was a feat in and of itself.

And then it finally happened. A few days ago I asked DD1 if she would go play in the playroom with her sister while I made dinner. No arguing. No bribery, off they went. I was stunned.

Then they stayed in there for about 20 minutes.

TWENTY MINUTES.

I think we all know that is a gift. You can make a meal, do laundry, pee in peace and quiet, hell, flip through a gossip magazine – all in 20 minutes. Give me a few more minutes and I might be solving world peace.

But see – there’s more to it than that. I have learned that to make it last that long, I have to exercise total discipline. DD2 will come to the gate, stand there, shake it and laugh – attempting in her cutest way to get my attention.

I must avert my eyes.

And forget talking.

If I dare make eye contact with either of them or they hear my voice…..it’s all over….out they will want to come.

So then I have to be stealth and cat-like when things get quiet. Typically I can hear DD1 playing and talking away…but it’s when DD2 is quiet that I worry she has discovered some new way to climb out, something elicit to eat and choke on, or has broken free and is climbing the stairs. But remember the rules – if they make eye contact with me or hear my voice, it’s over.

Then you add in our creaky old hardwood floors and creeping up on anyone is next to impossible.

I’ve actually figured out the quietest route to peer into the playroom and go unnoticed…..and then slip back into the kitchen and finish whatever it is I am making.

It is a true miracle over here. This gift of time, delivered via an agreeable older child along with a plastic gate. Somehow getting these extra few minutes to just get stuff done makes the day seem that much more manageable. Here’s hoping it lasts…..and praise the person who invented the gate.

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Life with 2 kids, Motherhood, Preschool, Toddler Antics

DUCK!

January 20, 2010

That ought to be my MO when feeding DD2. Every day I am surprised with just how different my two children are. It’s remarkable how they can look the same but different. How they can have the same habit of doing exactly what they know they shouldn’t be doing and look at me and then take off and do it. And it is remarkable how different they are in so many ways. Shall I list them?

No. I think we’ve all had enough of lists.

But if what happened this morning isn’t the ultimate in blog material then I don’t know why I have a blog. Is it a tale that I’ll mention off-hand as she’s on her way out the door with some punk with a daddy complex? Probably. But is there any way to casually drop “Hey honey, try not to toss your half-chewed sausage down Johnny’s shirt during dinner?”

I didn’t think so.

Let me paint the picture.

I am dragging this morning. I had one of those totally off-why did I bother to drag my ass out of bed in the sleet to get to the gym for this -workouts. The coffee wasn’t hitting the spot. My head was kinda half hurting but not quite enough to get Tylenol. I wanted breakfast but I just wasn’t sure what I wanted.

Until it landed in my bra.

You got it. DD2 is scrappy. She’s thin, she’s always on the go, she never stops climbing but she loves to eat. She’d already eaten more breakfast than our neighborhood football captain but as she was cruising past the breakfast table, she reached up to grab some food off her sister’s plate. I squatted down to intercept her as she moved along, to be sure she wasn’t eating anything she shouldn’t be, when suddenly I felt the lukewarm soggy mess of it on my bare skin.

You got it.

DD2, as she is prone to doing, removed the half-chewed sausage from her mouth and chucked it – only this time her aim was so solid – she managed to toss it right above the zipper on my hoodie and with enough force for it to fall down against my chest and into my bra and fall into little pieces.

I got out of bed why today?

You can’t make this shit up.

So fast foward to the year 2025….DD2 all dolled up in her appropriate fashion forward, I’m stylish but too cool to dress like I was excited for this date outfit…..with apathetic or overly eager teen slobbering boy awaiting her in our foyer (by then I will have a foyer. mark my words)….I’ll be sure to ask where they’re going for dinner and remind her not to toss her chewed sausage at him. I don’t think boys like that.

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Life with 2 kids, Motherhood, Toddler Antics

Got a minute?

January 18, 2010

Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine cover story was all about moms and time. This is a tired story. Yet I’m gonna go there because I can’t resist.

Time and tracking time is one of those things that has hogged my thoughts and dictated my life since I had our first babe over four years ago. For the purposes of self-disclosure, I am pretty anal and organized, I run my house by schedule and have policed my children’s sleeping and feeding schedules from the minute they came home from the hospital. It’s the only way I know how to bring order to chaos. In fact, in that foggy daze of adjusting to life with a child, my first fight with DH was triggered by his comment “I lost track of time.”

I completely lost it. Sure, sleep deprivation and hormones had a lot to do with it. But we’ve never had a fight like that in our 8 years of marriage. The idea of losing track of time seemed like such a luxury to me, though I was only 6 weeks into this whole parenthood gig, that I both resented him for having that chance and was furious that he wasn’t consumed with time, schedules, feedings and sleep patterns as I was. And still am. Four years later.

So I read Sunday’s piece with great interest and frankly, was largely disappointed in the end. I felt the writer, Brigid Schulte, came off as a martyr in a way she probably didn’t mean but I think that is one of the great challenges facing moms when discussing the absence of free time in our lives. In the piece, Schulte ended up attempting to track her time for a professor who specializes in time-use, to analyze her time spent and help her find 30 hours of leisure time each week. Of course the whole idea that this is possible is a total joke but the point was that it depends partly on how you define leisure time. It was never clear to me how Schulte defines leisure time.

For me it’s easy – am I without children?

LEISURE.

Am I out with just one child – half-leisure.

It’s really that easy. So while Schulte questioned if gym time is leisure time – to me that is the panacea of leisure time. My morning gym visit has practically turned me into a gym rat and without that precious quiet time, I can’t face the day. Schulte challenged how waiting 2-hours for a tow truck was leisure time. She was without child so the prof deemed it leisure.

Again, expectations. To me – two hours anywhere without the kids equals leisure time.

Am I saying I don’t like my children? Of course not. Am I saying that I don’t love spending time with them? Again, of course not. But any time that I am not responsible for fetching something for someone, shuttling someone to preschool while another one is screaming for her nap in the back seat or chasing down a toddler clueless to danger in one direction while trying to make sure the 4- year -old on the opposite side of the park isn’t being kidnapped, is leisure time. It’s really pretty black and white to me.

So back to the premise – moms and time. There is so much about moms and time. How much is written about dads and time? And Schulte barely skimmed over this in her piece. She once referenced her husband out back smoking a cigar while she was doing dishes or something. I’m thinking – what the hell is he doing having leisure time while she is working.

And here’s where I think moms fall victim to being martyrs. So many of us, me included, are control freaks – and so with an inability to let go and pass off responsibilities to husbands who in all actuality, are capable functioning members of the human race (hence why we married them and then went on to have children with them) – and so we end up in this reality where we are frazzled and exhausted and have bad hair and need a moment. Why is this? And what are we doing to change that. I’d like to see more written about this issue in how we divide our time than the “woe is me the mom without a minute to spare” ballad.

Again, I’m picking on Schulte because she put herself out there. She writes about making cupcakes at 3am, kids homework at ungodly hours of the night, etc. So again, where is her husband? What’s he doing? At what point does a gal need to learn to let go so that she can have a minute? And what does it take for her to figure that out?

I guess we all have our breaking points. And I am sure there are couples out there where the dad is the one consumed by time and the mom loses track. It’s not me, but I’m sure they’re out there. That being said, I’d enjoy seeing more about how families constructively divide time and moms do find time to themselves instead of the raggedy old mom icing Valentine’s cupcakes at 4am for school when she has a board meeting with the CEO 4 hours later. I also think learning to say “no” is part of this. Are our children completely overscheduled? Do we accept every invitation and spend weekends driving from one birthday party to the next? Is this fun for everyone?

So again, maybe I’m tired and cranky but I think too many women take on everything and lack the confidence to say “no.”

There you have it. I am picking on women this time instead of men.

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Husbands, Life with 2 kids, Motherhood