When “choices” clash

Ahoy.

I’ve been asked to look after the infant of a family friend,”for money, of course”. You know, because my current role as a layabout sahm has left me desperate for cash and something to do.

Seriously, the choices (if they can be called choices…more like coping mechanisms in an anti-family society) of some dear friends have always been very different than ours. The fella and Huz seem to have the same discussion of the pros and cons of daycare vs. one-income living every time they talk. The fella and his wife feel that I am wasting my education and ruining my career prospects, and not giving Bean proper socialization nor the opportunity to build up his immune system by my not working for pay outside the home and sending Bean to daycare. They are unaware of the circumstances surrounding my ”choice to opt-out” (ha! ha ha haaaaaaaa!) and I don’t particularly care to enlighten them on the specifics. No point. Their minds are already made up and I am not here to convert them to my way of thinking. It has been annoying to be judged like this, but I’ve just agreed to disagree and told Huz I don’t know why he gets sucked into the debate time and time again.

But now: their second child, at three months, is not coping well with daycare. He’s got a bad belly, it seems; loose poops, problems with formula, ongoing minor illnesses, etc etc. The daycare keeps sending him home. The center doesn’t want the liability of dealing with what I guess they feel is a less-than-hearty infant. So in seeking a solution, their thoughts have turned to me. If I am already hanging around at home, I should be happy to have the opportunity to make a little money, right?

Nah. It is already unnatural for a person to be alone all the time with one baby, let alone two, especially with them being so close in age. I told Huz to say I wish them the best but have my hands full with Bean and my writing projects. I suppose there is no polite way to tell them I would be happy to donate a few ounces of breastmilk every day for the baby. I’m still nursing Bean so it would be no trouble. The fella can easily pick it up on his way home from work each night. 

They would probably stop talking to us if I offered.

I’m not trying to be political with the suggestion. I just believe that breastmilk could help. Of course, I also believe that they should not have bought more house than they could afford, requiring them to put both kids in daycare full-time and almost negating the salary one of them is making, and that if I were them I would sell the place, move in with their nearby family and have one spouse quit working to be with the kids at least until the baby gets better, but I’m not going to say that, either. I know how much it sucks to be judged based on incomplete information. It also sucks to feel like I am letting down people by refusing to help them in a time of need. I simply believe it would cause more problems than it would solve if I looked after an infant in addition to Bean, no matter how well I was compensated (although it’s likely that the compensation would be quite low).

Here I am once again, with new revelations brought on by parenthood. Who knew I would ever consider it a great idea to essentially be a volunteer wet nurse for friends? Who knew I would ever feel so strongly about any of these things? I am surprising myself daily.

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In another parenting “choice” convo today, I was told by someone who had two healthy deliveries and uninterrupted nursing during both of her minimal hospitals stays that she “wished she could have had a c-section” like me. She wishes that her child’s life were in such danger that it required major emergency surgery to extract him quickly so he could be saved? She went on to say how common c-sections were in her mother’s group. That’s right, they are rilly, rilly popular. It’s the in thing to do, the top-notch choice of the weak and the too-posh-to-push. I’m sure that all of those women were pleased to death that they ”got to be taken care of for so long afterward”. Never mind the mind-numbing terror of it all, the catheter, and the physical and emotional pain that lingers for months. Just think of those fabulous 3 extra days you get in the hospital before they kick you out! Hell, some babies like Bean even have to stay behind! What a great break for the parents!

I know she was just trying to say that she wish she had been able to rest more after her deliveries, but damn, what a misguided way of saying so.

I am having one hell of a time trying to maintain my friendships with other parents during these past few days. I won’t even get into the guns-in-the-house-with-kids debate I recently found myself carefully navigating through. 

I seem to be allowing myself to feel very defensive for some reason, too. I need to stop that. They can all bite me. Bring on The Beavers.

Necessary dialogue

This should be good.

From the MomsRising e-newsletter:

Starting today, one of our favorite blog sites, the Huffington Post, is partnering with MomsRising to launch a series of blogs about work/life issues.  It features the powerful voices of leading writers and thinkers who care deeply about the issues facing families in the workplace. I have the honor of setting the stage and introducing these luminaries.  We invite you to join the conversation with us in this blog space.  Here’s a bit I wrote about the intention of this new venture:

“This new column is about consciousness raising and culture change.   Very few Americans realize that there is deep bias against mothers in this country and that we are undermining family’s ability to care for children.”

CHECK IT OUT: To read and respond to the inaugural Work/Life post in this new blog space, click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-blades/a-peaceful-revolution_b_63729.html  

Praise God/dess

Not only are the Beavers back together, but the mortgage will be paid. A banner day for The Beans.

I’ve been bugging out about some job tension with Huz, but all is well. This “sahm” shit is scary as hell sometimes. I am accustomed to buying Huz presents and taking him to criminally expensive restaurants; to telling him to go where his work passions lie and I will foot the bills while he figures it out. Now I quake at the thought of him leaving or losing the only (fantastic but highly stressful) paying job we’ve got.

Brave thing, this sahm role. Brave indeed. Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Oh wait, yes I would: a mother’s helper to look after Bean while I telework. Pie in the sky? Bite me. It can be done and it will be done. Until I make it happen, and I will make it happen, I’ve gotta stay brave.

Holding firm

Recruiter contacted me…fat salary…close to home…could do the work with my eyes closed (well, at least one eye. Like a pirate!)

BUT

it would require that I put Bean in daycare or pay through the nose for private care, and I just can’t. Or won’t. I won’t. I have my reasons. They’re good ones. But dammit, the financial disparity between Huz and me is killing me. I just cannot seem to get used to it, to trust even him enough to be comfortable with not working. He is insulted by this. It’s our money, he says. Then why am I no longer directing what we invest in, how much we save, or when and how we pay off debts? I am the one who is good with money, I am the one who got him out of dire financial straits after his accident and living la dolce vita in Manhattan. I was the primary earner, actually the only earner for a time. So why can’t I relax when he is? Arrrrrrrrgh.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But it is. So.

This is the work mojo I am putting out to the universe. They are simply key words and phrases. I want this and I will get it. I likely have to create it for myself. Fine. I will. Laugh if you wish, tell me it’s too vague, tell me that there are a million other people who want the same thing and that the average work culture won’t support it. Then you know the drill. Bite me.

Educational technology
Independence
Good money
Writing
Virtual teams
Social service
Strong organizational communication and shared vision

I have actually had this kind of work before. I left it to get more money elsewhere. 

I want it back.

It is such a simple solution…

so it must have been the 8.5 months of sleep deprivation that kept me from this.

I’ve been pissed off, you know? Totally pissed off that I was not given the teleworking arrangement I requested with my former employer despite stellar reviews AND prior successful teleworking with other employers, even though my job before Bean’s arrival was completely virtual. I kid you not, nobody even knew I was there except the receptionist and whomever I passed on my way out to lunch. My team consisted of volunteers and subject matter experts across the nation whom I conferenced with via phone, e-mail and web-based document sharing. I only reported to an office every day because of a phenomenally short-sighted CEO who didn’t “believe” in teleworking arrangements, despite the fact that she leads a parent advocacy organization. Of course, even while teleworking I would need to hire childcare help, but that help would take place in my home for a much lower cost than daycare, ala a paid Mother’s Helper of my judicious choosing rather than inconsistent someones being given minimum wage and even more minimal supervision in an unfamiliar environment for Bean.

So here I have been, not only jobless since I told them to bite me and rejected their lame-ass “come in three days a week for a paltry salary with no benefits or childcare subsidies and hey we are doing you a favor here” offer, but also fretting about the perceived loss of skills that may occur while I am not working (good instructional design is good design, no matter what tech tools you use, but future employers will want to know what have you done lately?). So it has finally occurred to me: why don’t I offer my skills to non-profits as a volunteer consultant? Hullo! Yes, it blows that I would not be getting paid, because I should be getting paid, it is completely fucked that I will not be getting paid, BUT since we can’t fix the f’ed up system we live in by tomorrow, I can at least keep my skills sharp, my resume polished, and fulfill my ever-annoying-yet-absolute requirement to be contributing something positive to the greater good while being at home with Bean.

See what a week’s worth of 4-5 hours stretches of sleep a night can do for a person?

P.S. I know I use the sahm label on some of my posts despite not being a fan of that designation. I just want to be sure to attract people who may be searching for others in similar situations. Dialogue is good, babycakes.

For all you babymommas out there

I so needed to read these comments after the Why Can’t I Love This post on Ask Moxie, and I bet you do, too. If you don’t already visit her site, I am sharing this specific link to the comments that follow the WCILT post as a way to connect us all in a (virtual) tribe of mothers, which is something we very much need, and as a way to tell you that no matter how you are feeling right now, YOU ARE DOING A GREAT JOB. And you know what? So am I.

http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2007/04/qa_why_cant_i_l.html#comments

Much love (and I mean that),

B.

Another problem of privilege

This time it’s mine.

Huz works more than any other person I have ever met. Friends and family marvel at his ability to keep going, and going, and going. That’s my problem. He’s always gone.

We just get by financially, yet I can’t work outside of our home to help out, because there are no jobs available that run from midnight to 6am, which are the only hours Huz is consistently home (don’t get any ideas, you stalker types, my Rottweiler will eat your balls). Even if there are such jobs, I would have to give up sleeping entirely, because who would take care of Bean during the day? Babysitters are $12-14 an hour, anyway. Who can afford that? 

I can’t take any classes to open up more work-from-home opportunities, such as graphic design, because Huz often only has 1 day off a week, and we never know when that day is going to be until the week before (even then, he sometimes goes in for meetings). We can barely keep Bean’s doctor’s appointments, let alone a class schedule. I would love to take some online classes, but we cannot currently afford them, since I can’t work outside of our home. See the cycle we are in?

Yes, we could sell this place and move to a less safe and convenient area, but we chose this neighborhood because it is a 10 minute walk from Huz’s workplace. We would really never see him if we moved further away. As it is, Bean and I are in bed when he gets home (we’ve tried staying up, it was a mess). Huz and Bean already only spend time together for about 2 hours in the morning, maybe four days a week.

Why must marriages and parent/child relationships be sacrificed at the altar of the workplace? Is it really only for food and shelter, or is it something more? Because as a society, we only seem to respect people who display the tenacity of a pit bull in their work endeavors. The frothing, snarling, blind and murderous tenacity of an attacking pit bull. Yup. Stories of those who have come from nothing and created business empires, the American Dream, those are the stories we love to hear. Left out of those stories are the children and spouses who were left to their own devices while the alpha males were pursuing that dream with fury, ostensibly to provide for their families. 

The government and the public at large say that if you are too poor to stay home with your kids or afford quality care, it is your fault. What’s that? You already work two jobs and your children are in a subsidized daycare with a marginal reputation at least 60 hours a week, being cared for by people who are rewarded with minimum wage? You better enroll yourself in some classes to better your situation! What do you mean there aren’t enough hours in the week? Give up that little time you have with your children! Give up sleep!  We are a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society of independently wealthy mavericks! Buy, buy! Sell, sell! If you want better tax breaks, get richer! People in power can all afford to have their wives stay at home with their children. You could too, if you would just work harder.

The thing is, I call this isolation of motherhood, this quandary of mine, a problem of privilege because a mile south of my neighborhood, there is a mom who was raised by people who were never able to give her the access to the education she would have needed to get a job that pays a livable wage. Her husband/boyfriend/babydaddy is in the same situation, if he hasn’t left her out of frustration, depression, and the inability to look into his children’s eyes and know that he cannot provide for them. This mom would look at me in my 2 bedroom 2 bath condo in a fashionable part of town, she would look at my degrees, she would look at my laptop, she would look at my $500 stroller, and my ability to breastfeed and be with my child all day and all night even if it is largely by myself, and she would laugh in my mopey face.

But why are we like this, this society of ours? Why is being with our children a privilege that is attainable only for the (comparatively) rich? Why are only 30% of American children raised by a parent who can actually be home with them? What are the societal implications of this disconnection? What are the implications for women like me who have to choose between career disempowerment or seeing our children only when we are off from our inflexible jobs and too exhausted to feel fully present? I was a latchkey kid from age 8, so my choice was already made in my mind; Bean is not going to be alone like I was, not just so I can afford better cable tv and a car that works. But  I realize that being able to make that choice is a privilege, because even with daycare costing $1200-1300 a month for a baby, even with work-related transportation, and food and clothing costs taking away from our earning power to such a degree that it is hardly worth leaving the house, some women still have to go to work to bring home the measly remains of a salary, just to keep the lights turned on and food in the fridge.

I am glad that Huz is a smashing success at work. Maybe if he were paid proportionately to the time and effort he puts in, I wouldn’t be writing this at all. Maybe his absence wouldn’t be as big an issue if I could afford to have help with the baby.  Maybe it’s just that my life has changed in every way fathomable, while his has pretty much stayed the same. I know they say that behind every great man is a great woman, but I can’t help but wonder, who is behind me?

Grrrrr…

Ahem.

Here is a list of “flexible” jobs that are readily accessible to me now that I am a “stay at home mom” who “opted out” of going back to work after the twelve non-paid weeks that I was supposed to be slobberingly grateful for having at all. Let’s see, I can throw parties in the comfort of homes all over Chicagoland, and become a “leader” in selling:
1. make-up (see below)
2. bakeware (pampered chef)
3. children’s toys (discovery)
4. and vibrators (passion parties)

I was at the drugstore with Bean the other day to quickly grab a few odds and ends, when we were approached by a well-dressed woman cooing over Bean’s sunglasses. I am beginning to get used to people making a fuss over him when he wears his shades, so I thanked her and explained he has very sensitive eyes. She wanted to know how someone so little knows to not pull them off blahblahblah and I was all yepyepyep I sure am lucky they stay put. She then asks me a question that I simply do not know how to answer yet: “So, are you a stay-at-home-mom?”

*Grrrrr. Do not give teacherface, do not give teacherface.* Do not ask in a much too-loud voice, “I am out of the house aren’t I? Do you think it’s only because my working spouse gave me my allowance and told me it was okay to stop keeping house for an hour but only if I needed to get a few things at Walgreen’s?”

She means no harm, I know. It’s my issue. So I say something like, well, that wasn’t really the plan but yes I guess you could call me that for now. This leads to the inevitable what do you do question, to which I always want to say I grow a human, but I instead respond with a veryverybrief summary of my work experience for the sake of pleasant conversation.

She tells me she is an entrepreneur, a leader in the community, and she thinks that she has just the opportunity for me, and then she hands me a Mary Kay card!?! Earlier, when she asked me what my husband does and when I said chef, she said that she is also a catering business co-owner. Everything was, “me too!” like we were just a couple of peas in a pod. What if I had told her that I worked on a NASA grant for remote sensing aeronautics education, which was true at one time? Would she would have told me that she was an astronaut?

Of course I shouldn’t have given her my number when she asked for it, but the only alternative that came to mind was to let her know exactly how I felt about her proposition. How do you tell someone that you are absolutely appalled by what they are saying to you, when they don’t really have bad intent? Very selfish intent, certainly, but malicious? Of course not.

But I was appalled, because I was duped into thinking I was having a perfectly interesting conversation with a perfectly interesting stranger (Chicago is like that, Huz thought he was being mugged the first time it happened to him) yet lo and behold, she is trying to recruit me to sell Mary freakin Kay beneath her. I hoped that telling her a bit about what I do did for a living and my education level would clue her in to the fact that Mary Kay would not be a good fit for me, while not outright insulting her own career choice. Nyet. Subtlety is clearly lost on this chick.

So get this: she has called twice in the past 48 hours. I am usually too occupied to talk on the phone, so I am not avoiding her calls on purpose; I actually do want to receive one to tell her, um, hell no.  Why do I now feel more comfortable telling her to bite me? Because both of her messages have included my baby’s name. Like she knows us, like we’re pals. Is that some way to reel me in, ala sales training 101? Oh hey, we really connected, I even remember your baby’s name, you know, the one you told me while I was surreptitiously learning all I could about you under the guise of a friendly chat that was actually a sales pitch?

And to describe a cosmetic sales job as a leadership opportunity? And to say that she would be happy to represent me as though she is doing me some kind of a favor? Oh, she’ll represent me, alright, and help me to lead, amen, to lead sales commission dollars right into her knock-off designer purse that we both know she got at the tjmaxx. This kind of “opportunity” is not much better than the Ameriprise pyramid scheme’s cronies that surrounded former-Andersenites like locusts when our company imploded. They preyed upon scared people with mortgages and children, people who had the world ripped out from under their feet, and invited them to “info sessions” as if there were valid jobs to be had. What’s that, you say you were in training at Andersen? This, too, is a training job! You will train people to dupe old folks and impoverished single moms with whack financial advice and bring a hat full of cash back to your Ameriprise organ grinder like a sad little circus monkey. Then again, the “leadership” venture that homegirl was trying to rope me into with Mary Kay has the promise of a pink Cadillac, for the sassy mom on the go who wants the world to know that she can apply eyebrows on any one of you trolls with such awe-inspiring precision that you will stupefied into buying a crapload of the goop she is selling. Take that, Ameriprise.

The thing is, I am not too good to sell make-up. I will do what I can to make some dough, I have proven that in the past. Yes, selling cosmetic crap would be a serious waste of my education, but all work is good work, as long as it is not predatory in nature. It is just pathetic that this kind of job is top of mind when people hear the label “stay at home mom”. It is even more pathetic that someone would press me to give it a try, even after I told her I have a Master’s degree, because she knows that I probably don’t have very many options.  And goddammit, she is right. Nice work, America. Instead of requiring workplaces to offer flex-time, safe and affordable child care options, benefits for part-time workers, and paid family leave, you offer options in make-up, bakeware, children’s toys, and vibrators.

Perhaps I should get into business selling the latter; female workers with children are clearly being fucked, so we may as well be equipped to pleasure ourselves during the act, no?

As if I wasn’t inspired enough to do so before my little drugstore episode, I will certainly now be clicking this link and writing to help Dismantle the Mom Myth. If you live in the U.S., I hope you do, too.

I am an idiot for leaving corporate

I am an idiot for leaving corporate, it’s true.

Yes, I should have asked about post-baby work arrangements before accepting my pre-Baby Bean job at the “largest parent and child advocacy organization in the world”, but the thing is, I wanted the job. Sadly, it is common knowledge that if you actually want a job, you should likely not mention the desire to become pregnant at any point. You must appear at the interview like you have just arrived fresh from your tubal ligation.

Basically, I assumed that an org devoted to the welfare of parents and children would offer flexible work arrangements, and I was wrong. Being a former Andersen-ite (no, not consulting, the arthur one, the one where the whole firm went under for the wrongs of a few and then later was exonerated) I could have landed a Big Five Four position, made a great deal more money, and had a job to return to at full pay, minus the groveling/apologizing/demotion trappings of returning to work after staying at home for a few years to *gasp* raise my own child.

I just felt that after the Andersen fallout, and the Sears relocation (that was not much better due to monthly threatened mass layoffs)I could no longer handle working for the man and needed to get back to my non-profit/advocacy/tree-hugging roots. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Do over, goddamnit, do over!

Of course, at the time I wished I could do-over ever leaving non-profit advocacy in the first place, just to see how well I could do in corporate. I can do extremely well, I found. My personality type excels there, as a matter of fact. My conscience, however, not so much. Life lesson: never accept a job offer on a dare while drunk, no matter how good the salary or how delicious the wine.